The Hindu : Karnataka News : `India, Australia must work together in health sector'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 02, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Others

`India, Australia must work together in health sector'

By Our Staff Correspondent

MANIPAL, MARCH 1. The Australian High Commissioner in India, John McCarthy, on Tuesday said that India and Australia should work together in the health sector.

He was speaking as chief guest at the inaugural of Indo-Australian Conference on Biotechnology in Infectious Diseases, organised by the Australian Education International, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Queensland Institute for Medical Research, here.

Infrastructure

Mr. McCarthy said Australia had a good reputation in medical science. Of the seven Nobel prizes won by that country, four are in medicine and two in medicine-related fields. It had highly developed infrastructure in biotechnology. It had a fine record in Bio-pharmaceuticals and stem cell research. Australia had a good record of research in infectious diseases. It had established the National biotechnology Board in the 1980s.

He said India had the second largest scientific pool after the U.S. India had three million science graduates and seven lakh science post-graduates. India had a bright future in biotechnology. Both these countries should come together and they could do great things in the field of infectious diseases, Mr. McCarthy said.

Infectious diseases

Presiding over the function, the Vice-Chancellor of MAHE, H.S. Ballal, said infectious diseases are a global concern with enormous social and economic impact.

They account for 17.3 million deaths, where measles, malaria, HIV and TB account for about half of the total.

Though a majority of deaths take place in developing countries, infectious diseases are not confined by international borders, and posed a substantial threat to all populations throughout the world.

About 50 million people are infected with HIV world-wide and globalisation of trade and travel meant that infections can no longer be regarded as local problem, he said.

In recent years, the threat of infectious diseases has grown. But significant advances have made it possible to understand not only prevention, containment, and diagnosis, but also prognosis and treatment.

With more than 200 species of micro-organisms, whose genome has been sequenced, scientists are better armed to combat the diseases, he said.

Vaccines

Novel approaches such as vaccine development, including use of DNA technology, are being developed. According to Centre of Disease Control, Atlanta, 70 per cent of emerging disease episodes during the past 10 years has been zoonotic diseases, which are transmitted from animals to humans.

Surveillance for zoonotic diseases requires collaboration between animal and human disease specialists, Dr. Ballal said.

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