Tag Archives: Dr.Yusuf Hamied

Heart-warming story of the Hamieds, who set up CIPLA and have been saving lives

Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

When CIPLA started producing generic medicine, the US complained of patent-violation. Indira Gandhi stood by CIPLA. It is ironical therefore that the US should now dial India for supply of HCQ

Khwaja Abdul Hamied was a great fan of Mahatma Gandhi
Khwaja Abdul Hamied was a great fan of Mahatma Gandhi

The manner in which Muslims are being demonised in this country by a section of the media and Bhakts of the BJP, here is a story that should uplift the hearts of almost everybody else.

In the 1920s, a rich man in India put his son on board a ship from Bombay to the United Kingdom in order to acquire a law degree and become a barrister, as was fashionable among all privileged families in the country at the time. The boy, however, did not want to be a lawyer; his heart was in chemistry, a pursuit without a seeming future in those days.

But his father gave him little choice, so while he waved to his father as his ship pulled away, Khwaja Abdul Hamied was already running over other plans in his mind while standing on the deck. He jumped ship halfway through the seas to land in Germany which, in the early decades of the last century, was leading in the study of chemistry and chemicals. He acquired a degree, married a German Jew who was also a communist – two communities the Nazis hated the most. But before they could be caught by Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo, they escaped from Germany and safely reached India.

With his vast knowledge of chemicals, Khwaja Hamied set up the Chemical, Industral and Pharmaceutical Laboratories in 1935 which was shortened to CIPLA decades later after Independence.

Khwaja Hamied was a great fan of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and got down, in true nationalist spirit, to producing cheaply priced generic drugs for the common people. These included not only medicines for malaria and tuberculosis but also other respiratory disorders, cardiovascular diseases as well as routine and mundane ailments like diabetes and arthritis.

Sometime in the 1970s, Cipla (so renamed in the 1980s) began to manufacture a drug called Propranolol, patented by a US pharmaceutical giant from Brooklyn in New York, that was used in treating blood pressure, migraines and heart ailments, among others. In a bipolar world at the time, the US was no friend of India and a real superpower. Unlike Donald Trump, it did not need to issue threats for any country in the world to comply to its diktats.

The US complained to the Indian government. But unlike Narendra Modi last week, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did not immediately cave in. She sent for Yusuf Hamied, Khwaja’s son, himself a chemistry graduate from Cambridge, who had by then taken over the running of the company. When Mrs Gandhi asked how he could violate the patent law on drugs and get India into trouble, Yusuf told Mrs Gandhi the story of his father and why he had set up the company – to bring low priced quality drugs to the poor.

When he had handed his company to his son, Khwaja had told Yusuf just one thing – remember why this company was founded. “Unlike other pharmaceutical companies around the world, we are not here to make profits but to bring relief and healthcare to the poor who may otherwise have to die for want of quality drugs.”

That is all he was doing, Yusuf told an impressed Mrs Gandhi who could empathise with the concern for the poor. And she turned down the US’s command to India to stop producing the drug, knowing it could have consequences. Americans hated her for this and other acts of defiance, but she always had the interests of her own fellow citizens on top priority.

On Yusuf’s suggestion she also had the patent law on drugs changed to not include the drug per se, only the process of manufacture as inviolable, so that Cipla could go ahead and produce as many low-priced generic drugs for the poor as possible. Since then Cipla has also produced a low-cost drug to treat HIV and expanded operations into several developing countries, including African nations, where most HIV and poor patients existed at one time.

This then is the company which produces hydroxychloroquine used in the treatment of malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis which now has been exported in such large numbers to the United States under threat by a weaker Trump administration, depriving poor Indians of the same.

Even before Trump had bullied India into exporting the drug, Dr Hamiduddin Pardawala, the infectious diseases specilast at the Saifee Hospital in Bombay, had told some of us to note carefully that countries where malaria (and perhaps tuberculosis) was common were suffering less from Coronavirus than those where malaria was almost non-existent.

So where is malaria almost non-existent? The US, UK, Israel, France, Germany, Spain, Canada etc. In other words, countries which have suffered the maximum infestations. When I think of Germany, I wonder where these nations, who are profusely thanking India now for supplying HCQ to them, would have been today if Khwaja Hamied and his wife had been caught by the Gestapo and sent off to the concentration camps.

That goes even more forcefully for the bigots of this country, who have so demonised the Muslims and communalisedthe disease. There is something like karma in this world, even if not you but your future generations have to pay for it. Many of them might have got malaria in the past and been prescribed with HCQ that would have helped them develop the anti-bodies to resist COVID-19.

Many possible afflictions among them will need treating with this drug. Unknowingly, they may have taken many other generic drugs manufactured by this “Muslim’ company and owe the Hamieds a debt of gratitude for keeping their blood pressure under control and diabetes counts in check.

I would like to call this poetic justice without gloating over the fact. No other company in India, and certainly not the world, has done as much to bring affordable health care to poor Indians as has Cipla – and it has not been stingy about its research, often providing pharmaceutical ingredients and processes to other drug companies in the country to manufacture their own.

When India was partitioned Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was also a Bombay resident and part of the same social circles as the Hamieds, offered Khwaja an honourable move to Pakistan. The Hamieds were sure where their sympathies lay – with Gandhiji – and chose to stay back in India.

There are Muslims and then there are Muslims like the Tablighee Jamaatis of this particular Nizamuddin meet (not others who cancelled their own meets across the country in wake of the pandemic; even the Tablighi Jamaat was denied permission to hold a similar congregation in Mumbai) just like there are Hindus and Hindus, who kill other Hindus because they do not agree with bigotry.

It is not right to target all Hindus for the acts of a few crazy cult members among them. Similarly, a handful of Tablighi Jamaatis do not a whole community make.

We must stop demonising all for the acts of a few.

source: http://www.nationalheraldindia.com / National Herald / Home> India / by Sujata Anandan / April 12th, 2020

Cipla chairman donates Rs 8 cr to promote chemistry

Indian business leader, scientist and philanthropist Dr Yusuf Hamied on Monday announced a major financial donation to the Royal Society of Chemistry, the world’s leading chemistry community, to support an innovative chemistry education programme for school students in India. 

CiplaChairmanMPos11feb2014

Dr Hamied, who is the chairperson of the generic pharmaceuticals company Cipla and has pioneered the model of producing affordable medicines for patients in developing countries, is donating Rs eight crore to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Hamied Inspirational Chemistry Programme.

The programme will be managed by the Royal Society of Chemistry in partnership with the UK’s Salters Institute and leading Indian academic institutes to enhance the skills and knowledge of Indian chemistry teachers and inspire students to study chemistry at university.

Over the next five years, the programme aims to equip 8,000 teachers across India with the specialist knowledge and skills to deliver exciting and engaging chemistry lessons, and to pass this knowledge on to their colleagues. It will also provide 1,600 of the brightest chemistry students from all backgrounds with places at chemistry camps to motivate them to reach the necessary standards to study chemistry at university.

Dr Hamied said: “I am very pleased to be working in partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry to support the Hamied Inspirational Chemistry Programme. I believe the programme will make a real difference to the education and experience of students studying chemistry in schools across India.”

Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Dr Robert Parker, said: “We are delighted to be working with Dr Hamied and grateful for his generous donation to enable us bring together leading organisations from the UK and India to deliver this education programme and make a real impact.” Dr Hamied added: “To inspire the next generation of great Indian scientists we must equip our teachers with the specialist knowledge and practical skills they need to show their students that chemistry is a fascinating.”

Just as teachers pass on their knowledge to their pupils, the programme will support the most talented chemistry teachers in India to train their colleagues to deliver informative and exciting chemistry lessons – a “train the trainer”  approach. I am very pleased to support this sustainable model for teacher training which will allow the programme to reach thousands of teachers across the country.” Dr Hamied said: “An inspiring chemistry education isn’t just about excellent teachers.

We need to encourage and motivate the best students to achieve the knowledge and skills they need to go on to study chemistry at university and eventually, to make a strong contribution to India’s success. This isn’t just about getting the best grades – we also need students to develop problem-solving and interdisciplinary skills. That is why I am also very pleased that this joint initiative will support the best students – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds – to take part in chemistry camps at leading academic institutions and experience a true taste of chemistry at university.”

Dr Simon Campbell, former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry and personal friend of Dr Hamied, said: “This unique programme is a significant educational investment with great potential to train the skilled chemists that will be vital for India’s growth and social wellbeing.”

source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> State / Bangalore – DHNS / February 10th, 2014