29 May 2009
New Delhi, India
India will focus on developing new vaccines to fight new diseases surfacing worldwide, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said
India will focus on developing new vaccines to fight new diseases surfacing worldwide, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said soon after taking charge on Friday.
“India is a big developing country and why should we depend on western countries for vaccines? Why should we take technology from them? We have to take a proactive initiative to make new vaccines to fight new diseases resurfacing in the past few years like swine flu, bird flu, dengue and many others,” Azad said.
God forbid, if a major disease outbreak happens in India, it will have a major impact because of the large population and we don't have better infrastructure to deal with it, he said.
Emphasising that discovering new vaccines has been a challenge worldwide, he said that to fight new diseases and discovering vaccine has been the main focus of medicos and scientists in the past few years, reports IANS.
My other priorities include strengthening the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and setting up a National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) for people living in urban slums. I want to send the NUHM proposal to the cabinet for approval, he said.
The Health Ministry will work towards setting up six institutes on the lines of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and 13 other medical institutes across country, Azad added.
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