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Access to medicines has become a major concern for countries worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, as pharmaceutical production and trade have been disrupted in the course of the crisis. Antibiotics are one group of medicines where worries about access have been raised. Access to the right antibiotic at the right time is important not only for curing infections of individual patients, but also for curbing antibiotic resistance globally. Reliable pharmaceutical supply is key to ensuring access to medicines. The global supply of generic medicines has over the last decades been transformed by the rise of India's pharmaceutical industry. In this paper, I trace the changing role of this industry for the global export of antibiotics, by mapping and describing changes in Indian antibiotic exports and discussing these in light of historical processes and events. The paper offers a novel approach to analyse global antibiotic trajectories by using international trade data from publicly available resources combined with a secondary literature review. I show that India's pharmaceutical industry today holds a key role as one of the world's biggest exporters of antibiotic medicines, but with an increasing dependency on China as a supplier of antibiotic ingredients. This produces both opportunities and concerns for access to antibiotics globally. • Offers a novel approach to trace antibiotic and pharmaceutical geographies. • Uses international trade data to map India's role for global antibiotics supply. • Describes that India has become one of the world's biggest exporters of antibiotics. • Shows that India is highly dependent on China for import of antibiotic ingredients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the orthopedics markets in the US and the EU reaching a plateau, the market size in countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China is steadily growing. As a result, major orthopedic companies are shifting their focus towards these markets and developing products tailored to their needs. However, a significant challenge associated with this new opportunity is the requirement for the development of more affordable prostheses compared to those sold in the US and Europe. With the introduction of these lower-cost models into the market, this article aims to assess their performance in comparison to traditional models. A literature review was conducted, analyzing four parameters—the Hospital for Special Surgery Score, Knee Society Score, Range of Motion, and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index—to evaluate different models. The findings indicated that low-cost models perform either equally well or, in some cases, slightly worse than traditional ones. It is worth to mention that the existing literature on this topic is limited, resulting in a relatively small number of models and studies included in this specific study. Nevertheless, this latter serves as a valuable foundation for future in-depth analyses and investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]