India willing to collaborate on vaccines

"We want to reduce the course for Tuberculosis from the present six months to two months and therefore are looking to develop a good TB vaccine and so also for the malaria," Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Anbumani Ramadoss said in Pune.

"We are ready to have global partners towards the development of vaccines for malaria and tuberculosis. Some of the developed countries have evinced interest in our project to create good vaccines for malaria and tuberculosis," the Union minister told reporters.

Earlier, Ramadoss laid the foundation stone for an international hostel at the Microbrial Containment Complex at the National Institute of Virology and also inaugurated its MSc (Virology) course, affiliated to University of Pune. The Minister said that the NIV has been asked to be prepared to cope with bird flu even though no such case has been reported in India. "Besides a surveillance on migratory birds, import of poultry is banned as a preparedness to check bird flu in our country," the Minister said.

China has encephalitis vaccine, India does not buy

To a query on the raging Japanese Encephalitis in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Ramadoss said at present 500,000 to one million vaccines are being imported from countries like Japan, Thailand and Korea. "By next year, we expect to produce five to six million Japanese encephalitis vaccines," Ramdoss said.

On tissue culture vaccines, he said the Indian Council for Medical Research and the World Health Organisation have validated it. "Once this vaccine is ready in 2006, people, particularly children, who are living in endemic areas would be vaccinated," the Central Minister said adding, the vaccine production trials are going on.

Asked about the tests for development of an AIDS vaccine, he said the tests at the National AIDS Research Institute, Pune for the middle-level dose are completed and the clearance to conduct the tests for the highest-level dose has just been received. In the next couple of months, the tests for MV Ancara vaccine for AIDS would begin in Chennai, he informed.