Any disease that affects a small percentage of the population is a rare disease. In many parts of the world, they also go by the term 'orphan disease’, for the lack of a market large enough to capture the support and resources needed to develop treatments for them. Most rare diseases are genetic, and present throughout a person's lifetime, even if symptoms do not immediately appear. Many rare diseases appear early on in life, and about 30 percent of children with rare diseases will die before reaching their fifth birthday. The number of people in the world living with a rare disease is estimated to be between 300 and 350 million. This figure has often been used by the rare disease community to highlight that while individual diseases – though rare – add up to a huge population of people with rare diseases. With its sizeable population, India has an increased frequency of rare diseases when compared to the rest of the worl...
