South-South cooperation in health and pharmaceuticals: emerging trends in India-Brazil collaborations

Health is emerging as an important area for collaboration among emerging economies. The health sector is an area in which India and Brazil have increasingly collaborated, bilaterally and in several international forums. The author of this paper argues that such collaboration has added new thrust to the process of South-South cooperation. Bilaterally, both countries have identified common health sector challenges and have established new fellowships for supporting research in their respective economies. India and Brazil have also developed partnerships for setting the agenda in multilateral forums like the WHO and WTO (facilitating trade negotiating positions for the export of pharmaceuticals) as well as in the IBSA and the BRICS forums. The paper also provides an overview of the trade linkages between the two economies with special reference to pharmaceutical sector, and presents recent initiatives for the expansion of ties in the health sector