Shalini Gupta – Delhi
Riding high on the success of the country’s National Aids Control Programme (NACP), currently in its fourth phase, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has joined hands with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) to set up a HIV Vaccine Translational Research Laboratory. The facility will be set up at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute at Faridabad, an autonomous institute under the aegis of DBT.
Inaugurating the initiative, former President APJ Abdul Kalam stressed the need for the fight against AIDS urging the country to embrace it as a national mission. “The need of the hour is to integrate R&D activities in the field of HIV research to develop and commercialise a viable vaccine,” he said. Disclosing details on funding of the institute, expected to be operational in the next six months, Dr MK Bhan, Secretary, DBT, informed that an initial investment in the form of seed funding of upto Rs 70 crore has been invested in the laboratory.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, lauded India’s efforts in combating the HIV epidemic.”India along with China and South Africa is one of the few countries which has reported a decrease in the number of HIV AIDS infections in the past few years. Wider access to anti-retroviral therapy(ART) has also resulted in fewer deaths in the HIV population,” Azad said.
He also added that the success of India’s polio vaccination campaign has ensured that not a single case has been reported since 2011, so much so that India has been removed from the list of countries with endemic polio cases. An HIV vaccine can help India get into a similar rank, he concluded.
With 34 million people affected by HIV/AIDS globally and 2.7 million new patients being added every year, the disease poses a formidable challenge to healthcare professionals and the scientific community in various countries.
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