Becton Dickinson India Pvt Ltd (BD India) is the wholly owned subsidiary of US based BD, a leading global medical technology company. BD India manufactures and sells medical devices, instrument systems and reagents that serve healthcare institutions, life science researchers, clinical laboratories, industry and general public. It is focused on improving drug therapy, enhancing the quality and speed of diagnosing infectious diseases and advancing research and discovery of new drugs and vaccines.
In an exclusive interview, Ram Sharma, Managing Director, Becton Dickinson India Private Limited shares the achievements and immediate plans of BD India to Pharmabiz. Ram Sharma has been heading BD India for the last five years and has been responsible for BD India's ambitious tie-up with public sector Hindustan Latex Limited for production and marketing of auto-disable syringes in the country. Excerpts:
It has been a year since the BD - HLL tie-up for joint production and marketing of auto-disable syringes was announced. What is its current status?
The collaboration is going strong. We are determined to utilize the complimentary strengths we have. BD has the manufacturing capability and HLL has the distribution strength. We have regular review meetings and are happy with the progress so far. The ultimate objective of the tie-up is to help prevent the reuse of syringes through the introduction of auto-disable syringes, education and training of healthcare workers, and the implementation of advocacy programmes with the Government of India. We are supplying HLL auto-disable syringes for immunization and curative purposes. HLL is marketing these immunization syringes under its own brand name. We are also working together to train and educate healthcare workers about safe injection practices and the new technology.
How big is Indian syringe market? What percentage of the market would you be able to tap through this tie-up?
Six billion syringes - that is what India needs if we take into account all kinds of syringes that are used in the country today. This is the size of the market we are looking at. The BD-HLL tie-up is for supply through government channels and through its social networking arms. As we know, the government channels that are focusing on the primary immunization programmes can have control over just 15% of the syringe market. The concept of safe injection by using auto-disable syringes should catch up with all stakeholders including doctors and clinical laboratories if disable syringes are to be used in a big way.
How do you plan to achieve this goal?
It's not our plan. The government itself has announced that all child hood immunizations would be carried out using auto-disable syringes. India is among the first few countries to make such an official announcement. It is a landmark decision. We need to understand that UNICEF and UNFPA have already recommended that all countries should switch over to auto-disable syringes by 2007-08. An official study conducted at AIIMS had found that 60 percent of all injections given in India are unsafe. We are in fact helping the government and social sector to tackle this situation by providing technical, advocacy tips through HLL.
The HLL-PPT is a trust that works with NGOs for distribution of healthcare products. We are also having talks with Indian Academy of Pediatricians (IAP) and Indian Medical Association (IMA) for endorsing safe injection practices. We have signed an MoU with IAP to train and educate pediatricians. We have conducted almost 60 programmes in the last 18 months. We need to increase the number of programmes in the near future.
What are the current areas of strength for BD India?
BD has a world-class, state-of-the-art facility at Bawal near Rewari in Haryana, with an initial outlay of Rs 110 crore. This facility is amongst the largest syringe and medical devices manufacturing plants in Asia and produces products recognized around the world. This includes disposable needles, syringes and catheters. We focus on three areas - medical, diagnostics and biosciences. The major products in medical segment are hypodermic products, specially designed devices for diabetes care, prefillable drug delivery systems, infusion therapy products, elastic support products and thermometers. This segment also includes disposable scrubs, specialty needles and surgical products. The major products in diagnostic segment are clinical and industrial microbiology products, sample collection products, specimen management systems and hematology instruments. The third segment, biosciences, provides integrated systems, products and services for a variety of applications in life sciences. This includes flow cytometry systems for cell analysis, monoclonal antibodies for biomedical research, molecular biology reagents for the study of genes, cell growth and screening products and labware products.
What are your future plans for the company? Are there new products in the pipeline?
I want to convert India as a global supply hub for medical devices. We are in the process of value adding to our existing capacity. We would like to catheters and insulin syringes manufactured from our Indian plant. The facility should be ready in another six months. Another important area is infectious disease diagnosis.
There have been very few diagnostic tools in the area of diseases like TB. I am trying to see what BD could do to make TB diagnosis better and faster. We have invested in China for setting up a rapid diagnostic plant. We are working on finding effective diagnosis tools for diseases like Malaria, TB, Flue, E-coli, Dengue, Chicken Guinea etc. In other words, we are putting infrastructure, R&D people together to develop solutions for third world diseases. Our motto is to help all people live healthy lives and we have a lot of focus outside the US.
BD is very active in the HIV/AIDS control programmes of the country. We even have tie-ups with Clinton Foundation, NACO and State AIDS Societies for supply of lab infrastructure. We feel that our responsibility towards India's 700,000 HIV patients should not end with supply of medicines. We need to monitor their progress. In fact NACO has a policy to use CD4 cell count machines to track the success of AIDS treatment. Over 90% of the machines installed are BD machines.
Another major area of action is life sciences research. Drug discovery tools, reagents and software used in stem cell research, cord blood banks, instrumentation etc are all supplied by us.
What has been your contribution to BD during the last five years? What is your vision for BD India?
When I took charge of BD India in 2001, our turnover was US $ 20 million. Today, in 2006, it is US $ 60 million. I want it to be US $ 100 million by 2008-09. My goal is to make 2-3 products that make a real difference in Indian healthcare area. Rapid diagnosis devices for Malaria, TB, HIV could perhaps be those tools. We need to penetrate other South Asian markets like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives etc in a big way. These are emerging markets for us. HTC in Sri Lanka has already accepted us as preferred suppliers. Next in the row is Bangladesh.