Mint staffer Venkatesan in TIME100 Next list

livemint.com:

Mint journalist Nandita Venkatesan on Wednesday was named in the top 100 emerging leaders globally in TIME magazine’s TIME100 Next list, following her successful challenge against a patent renewal application earlier this year for a key tuberculosis drug. Venkatesan, 33, shared the honour with her co-petitioner Phumeza Tisile, a South African health activist. Both Venkatesan and Tisile are tuberculosis survivors who lost their hearing due to side effects of a drug administered to them.

A “safer and more effective drug" to treat TB, by Johnson & Johnson, had been inaccessible to many due to patent laws, the magazine said in an article on the two women. The firm had filed for an extension of its patent in India, which prompted them, with the backing of Médecins Sans Frontières, file a plea with the Indian Patent Office. The two women won in March.

In an article accompanying the announcement, TIME magazine hailed the success of Venkatesan and Tisile’s petition as “a landmark victory that will help make the drug available at a much lower price". “We had to undergo what we had to undergo," Venkatesan was quoted as saying by TIME. “But maybe we could prevent this from happening to others." Venkatesan has been a part of Mint’s data journalism team since March 2022.

Harmanpreet Kaur, Indian women’s cricket captain, and Vinu Daniel, architect and founder of Wallmakers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, were the other two Indians on the list. The magazine describes the list as its “annual franchise recognizing the rising leaders in health, climate, business, sports, the arts and more". The list will appear in the print edition of the magazine that will hit the stands this Friday.