Novo Nordisk launches Wegovy in India as weight-loss market heats up
SOUMYAJIT SAHA
MUMBAI -- Danish pharmaceutical major Novo Nordisk on Tuesday launched its Wegovy weight loss drug in India, debuting the medicine ahead of schedule and just months after American rival Eli Lilly began offering its own popular product in the country, which is grappling with rising obesity.
Wegovy, also known as semaglutide, is being launched in five different dosage sizes, ranging from 0.25 milligrams, priced at about 4,366 rupees ($50) per week, to 2.4 mg, which will cost around 6,503 rupees a week. That will make the drug much cheaper than in the U.S., where a dosage of 2.4 mg costs $337 per week.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
12 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Israel Will Send Ceasefire Negotiating Team to Qatar a Day before Trump and Netanyahu Meet
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — U.S.-led ceasefire efforts in Gaza appeared to gain momentum Saturday after nearly 21 months of war, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's office said Israel on Sunday will send a negotiating team to talks in Qatar. The statement also asserted that Hamas was seeking 'unacceptable' changes to the proposal. U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for an agreement and will host Netanyahu at the White House on Monday to discuss a deal. Inside Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed 14 Palestinians and another 10 were killed while seeking food aid, hospital officials in the embattled enclave told The Associated Press. And two American aid workers with the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were injured in an attack at a food distribution site, which the organization blamed on Hamas, without providing evidence. Weary Palestinians expressed cautious hope after Hamas gave a 'positive' response late Friday to the latest U.S. proposal for a 60-day truce but said further talks were needed on implementation. 'We are tired. Enough starvation, enough closure of crossing points. We want to sleep in calm where we don't hear warplanes or drones or shelling,' said Jamalat Wadi, one of Gaza's hundreds of thousands of displaced people, speaking in Deir al-Balah. She squinted in the sun during a summer heat wave of over 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Hamas has sought guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Previous negotiations have stalled over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would lead to the war's end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to ensure the militant group's destruction. 'Send a delegation with a full mandate to bring a comprehensive agreement to end the war and bring everyone back. No one must be left behind,' Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, told the weekly rally by relatives and supporters in Tel Aviv. A Palestinian doctor and his 3 children killed Israeli airstrikes struck tents in the crowded Muwasi area on Gaza's Mediterranean coast, killing seven people including a Palestinian doctor and his three children, according to Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. Four others were killed in the town of Bani Suheila in southern Gaza. Three people were killed in three strikes in Khan Younis. Israel's army did not immediately comment. Separately, eight Palestinians were killed near a GHF aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, the hospital said. One Palestinian was killed near another GHF point in Rafah. It was not clear how far the Palestinians were from the sites. GHF denied the killings happened near their sites. The organization has said no one has been shot at its sites, which are guarded by private contractors and can be accessed only by passing Israeli military positions hundreds of meters (yards) away. The army had no immediate comment but has said it fires warning shots as a crowd-control measure and only aims at people when its troops are threatened. Another Palestinian was killed waiting in crowds for aid trucks in eastern Khan Younis, officials at Nasser Hospital said. The United Nations and other international organizations have been bringing in their own supplies of aid since the war began. The incident did not appear to be connected to GHF operations. Much of Gaza's population of over 2 million now relies on international aid after the war has largely devastated agriculture and other food sources and left many people near famine. Crowds of Palestinians often wait for trucks and unload or loot their contents before they reach their destinations. The trucks must pass through areas under Israeli military control. Israel's military did not immediately comment. American aid workers injured The GHF said the two American aid workers were injured on Saturday morning when assailants threw grenades at a distribution site in Khan Younis. The foundation said the injuries were not life-threatening. Israel's military said it evacuated the workers for medical treatment. The GHF — a U.S.- and Israeli-backed initiative meant to bypass the U.N. — distributes aid from four sites that are surrounded by Israeli troops. Three sites are in Gaza's far south. The U.N. and other humanitarian groups have rejected the GHF system, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon, violates humanitarian principles and is not effective. Israel says Hamas has siphoned off aid delivered by the U.N., a claim the U.N. denies. Hamas has urged Palestinians not to cooperate with the GHF. GHF, registered in Delaware, began distributing food in May to Palestinians, who say Israeli troops open fire almost every day toward crowds on roads heading to the distribution points. Several hundred people have been killed and hundreds more wounded, according to Gaza's Health Ministry and witnesses. The U.N. human rights office says it has recorded 613 Palestinians killed within a month in Gaza while trying to obtain aid, most of them while trying to reach GHF sites. The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children. according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which is led by medical professionals employed by the Hamas government. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but the U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.
Japan Today
4 days ago
- Japan Today
UK's Princess Kate says she had to 'put on brave face' in cancer journey
Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales visits the RHS's Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex. July 2, 2025. Stefan Rousseau/Pool via REUTERS Kate, Britain's Princess of Wales, said on Wednesday that she had to put on a "brave face" throughout and following her cancer treatment last year, describing the ordeal as a life-changing experience. Kate, 43, announced in March last year that she would undergo a course of chemotherapy after tests taken following major abdominal surgery revealed that an unspecified form of cancer had been present. She completed the course of treatment in September, and said earlier this year she was in remission. "You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment, treatment's done, then it's like, 'I can crack on, get back to normal', but actually the phase afterwards is really... difficult," Kate said during a visit to a hospital in Essex, southeast England. Speaking to staff, patients and volunteers at the hospital, the princess emphasized the importance of support after treatment, noting that while patients may no longer be under clinical care, they often still struggle to "function normally at home" as they once did. Kate described the cancer diagnosis and treatment as "life-changing" for both patients and their loved ones, according to PA Media, adding: "It's a rollercoaster, it's not one smooth plain". The princess has been gradually resuming her public royal role but missed the Royal Ascot horse racing event last month, with a royal source citing her need for balance following her cancer treatment. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Yomiuri Shimbun
6 days ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
I Got an Ambulance Ride, CT Scan and ER Care in Brazil. My Bill: $0.
PARATY, Brazil – My son had a high fever, so my wife and I decided to cut short our beach vacation and head home, worried about the quality of health care so far from Rio de Janeiro. I packed our bags, took one last look at the calm shoreline and headed out to load up the car. I popped open the trunk door of our hatchback and commenced with that intricate game of Tetris practiced by all vacation dads. I'd noticed weeks before that rust was eating away at one of the hatch door's support beams but hadn't given it much thought – not, at least, until it suddenly snapped and the full weight of the door came slamming down on me. I stumbled away and grabbed my head, only realizing how badly I'd been hurt when I pulled my hand away and saw it was covered in blood. There was more on my clothes and in the dirt below. I fell to the ground, yelled for my wife and, suddenly woozy, heard muffled voices beginning to holler for someone to call an ambulance. Even after six years in Brazil as The Washington Post's Rio de Janeiro bureau chief, I confess one of my first thoughts was stubbornly American. Out of the murkiness, it came with sudden clarity: How much is this going to cost me? Six hours later – after an ambulance ride, CT scan, X-ray cranial imaging and six stitches in my head – I had my answer: $0. At a time when health care remains one of the most divisive issues in Washington – and the Congressional Budget Office estimates President Donald Trump's signature domestic legislation could leave millions more Americans uninsured – my unexpected admission to a Brazilian public hospital served as an education of sorts on a fundamentally different system. Health care is a basic right in Brazil, enshrined in the constitution. Every one of its 215 million citizens – in addition to 2 million foreign residents – is entitled to free care in what has become the world's largest public health system. The government says the Sistema Único de Saúde – known to everyone here as SUS – tallies an astounding 2.8 billion admissions per year. More than 7 in 10 Brazilians rely on it entirely, receiving everything from mundane care to complex surgeries on the public dime. SUS is far from perfect. Patients wait in long lines for specialized care. Lawmakers leave it underfunded. Workers routinely go on strike. It buckled during the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic and hospitals began turning patients away, leading to scenes of desperation across the country and inflaming political divisions. Former President Jair Bolsonaro, a hard-line conservative, sought to privatize the system but quickly backed down after public backlash, organized under the banner 'Brazil Needs SUS.' Current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who's long championed a robust social safety net, has since vowed to relieve the strain on SUS with a fresh funding package. 'We're not going to let this program fail,' he said. 'Because the poor need to be treated like people.' Perhaps because I was more comfortable with a system more similar to the United States', my family and I had always opted for Brazil's private health care network, where the best hospitals rival anything in the developed world. Our son was delivered and receives his pediatric care in Rio de Janeiro's private system. So on that fateful Friday morning, when my son's fever spiked in this seaside village where the only hospital is a public one, we called his pediatrician and decided to drive the four hours home. But the hatch door had a different plan. The first responders took my vital signs, wrapped my head in a thick bandage and helped me into an ambulance that had been dispatched by Hospital Hugo Miranda. Off we went. The contrast with the American system was immediately apparent – not from what hospital staff asked, but what they didn't. No one inquired about our insurance coverage. No one even jotted down my tax identification number, which is solicited here even when paying parking meters or buying a bottle of toothpaste. I was pushed by wheelchair from room to room. First a nook where I received a shot of pain medication. Then a cramped room where a doctor injected a local anesthetic and closed my six-centimeter wound with six stitches. Then onward to an imaging suite where X-rays were taken to ensure the injury had been superficial. And finally to an adjoining center where a CT exam was performed to verify there was no bleeding in the brain. As the hours went by, I saw Brazil's diversity on display in the halls of the hospital. The population of Paraty is only 47,000, but the historic port town serves as the regional anchor for a vast dispersion of shoreline communities. Many people travel by boat across enormous distances to reach the hospital. On Friday, they crowded into waiting areas and exam rooms alongside the urban working class and affluent out-of-towners – all guaranteed the same level of care. For 40 minutes while waiting to be stitched up, I sat wordlessly next to a barefoot man with one eye. In the early afternoon, I was called back to the see the doctor who'd performed my intake. She counseled rest, prescribed pain medication and antibiotics, and sent me on my way. But while I was getting better, my son's fever had reached 104 degrees. We sought treatment for him, too. Hugo Miranda immediately admitted him; after an hour of waiting, his name was called. Ten minutes with a pediatrician was all we needed for a diagnosis: tonsillitis. The pediatrician prescribed antibiotics and Tylenol to reduce the fever, then called in the next patient on her list. My son's hospital bill was the same as mine: $0.
