Ujjain: Indian research is focused on developing the vaccines which are available in India through imports but are not manufactured yet in the country, with the objective of import substitution.
There is urgent need for the Indian companies to develop certain vaccines on a priority basis which include vaccines against viral pneumonia, dengue virus, The Indian Double Mutant Variant of Coronavirus-B.1.617 etc. India needs to intensify its R&D efforts for developing vaccines against these diseases. Many of the above-mentioned diseases, which are not presently a threat in India, are spreading quite fast across countries due to increase in trade and people’s movement.
Much of the research at company level is carried out at certain companies such as Serum Research Institute of India, Pune; Biological E Ltd, Hyderabad, Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad; Panacea Biotec, New Delhi etc among others. The focus is on the development of single and multiple antigen vaccine at more competitive prices. Scientists are busy in developing models to tame this fast changing geometry of virus. In New Education Policy government has attracted researchers, scientisst and mathematicians towards quality of research. To promote the research our government has increased the facilities and fund to research institutions, so that a common man could be benefited by getting a vaccine at low cost. The profound strength of the Indian vaccine manufacturers emanates from the availability of low cost highly skilled manpower, capability to develop and produce high quality vaccine products, availability of multiple starting materials including plastics and other packing materials locally, prefilled syringes at competitive prices followed by quality control endeavour. The costs of pre-clinical as well as clinical trial are also considerably low. The vaccines manufactured are primarily the conventional once; certain modern recombinant DNA based vaccines as also conjugate vaccines have also been added and are being manufactured by multiple Indian companies.
Indian vaccines industry has a large internal market to be serviced. The market includes the sale of vaccines for utilization in the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) of the government and the trade market. On the export front, because of various other reasons including WHO certification of multiple numbers of Indian vaccines as also the manufacturing premises, which maintain WHO compliant standards and further, because the production -cost are low, the Indian manufacturers are in a position of exporting a sizable quantum of their production annually. In India most of the diseases of the developing world are found including a host of the developing world are found including a host of neglected disease. India is also the hub of emerging modern pharmaceutical companies as it has world -class scientific capabilities. Indian intellectuals have been supporting science as a tradition and this has become more intense over time after the country’s independence in 1947.At this crucial juncture therefore, Indian research needs to be intensified to work on the development of vaccines to protect people from the attack of multiple numbers of pathogens, endemic to the developing world. While Indian efforts continue to intensify through in-country research carried out at a manufacturing units, other efforts such as those made through local institutions singularly or through international collaborations are also significant but need to be intensified with allocation of more funds in order to achieve faster impact. So that India may not run with the short of vaccines.
Dr VK Gupta
Professor and Head &
Director, Ramanujan Research
Centre of Mathematics, Govt
PG Madhav Science College, Ujjain
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