INDIAN SCIENTIST AND CHAIRMAN OF CIPLA
PADMA BHUSHAN DR YUSUF KHAWAJA HAMIED
BORN : 1936
Dr. Yusuf Khawaja Hamied is a leading Indian Scientist and Chairman of Cipla, a socially conscious generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935.
Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, Yusuf Hamied was raised in Mumbai (previously Bombay). His Indian Muslim father and Russophone Jewish mother met in pre-war Berlin, where they both were graduate students. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Christ's College, Cambridge. He still uses his chemistry notebooks from Cambridge when he develops new syntheses of drugs. He is an alumnus of the Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay. Affectionately called Yuku by his close friends, Hamied is fond of Western classical music and has been close friends with the world-famous conductor Zubin Mehta since boyhood.
Dr. Hamied is best known outside India for defying large Western pharmaceutical companies in order to provide generic AIDS drugs and treatments for other ailments primarily affecting people in poor countries. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest Civilian Honour by Government of India in 2005.
Dr. Hamied has led efforts to eradicate AIDS in the developing world and to give patients life-saving medicines regardless of their ability to pay, and has often been characterized as a modern-day Robin Hood figure as a result. Former head of Johnson and Johnson Ajit Dangi says plainly "In Africa, Cipla is a temple and Dr. Hamied is God." To this Hamied has countered "I don't want to make money off these diseases which cause the whole fabric of society to crumble". In September 2011, in a piece about how he was trying to radically lower costs of biotech drugs for cancer, diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases, The New York Times wrote of Hamied:
Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of the Indian drug giant Cipla Ltd., electrified the global health community a decade ago when he said he could produce cocktails of AIDS medicines for $1 per day — a fraction of the price charged by branded pharmaceutical companies. That price has since fallen to 20 cents per day, and more than six million people in the developing world now receive treatment, up from little more than 2,000 in 2001.
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