With public-private partnership models turning out to be the future trend, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has taken a number of initiatives in the direction of linking up with the organization within the country and outside, including the US and Germany.

These PPPs have been firmed up in the areas of evaluation, development and treatment of diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. A number of such collaborative efforts are going on already and discussions are being held with more agencies abroad in this regard, sources said.

"Various agencies including governments, international health organizations and non-governmental organizations, are looking to the private sector for assistance in implementing public health initiatives to tackle large, complicated and expensive public health problems,'' according to an official of the ICMR.

Already the ICMR has tied with Asta Medical, Germany for evaluation of Miltefosine (an oral kala-azar drug) and with Therion, USA for development of HIV vaccine while another similar collaborative effort was launched with Smithkline Beecham for use of albendazole co-administration with DEC as elimination tool for filariasis.

ICMR is one of the founding partners for the PPP initiative for development of drugs for neglected diseases since 2003. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI) has the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Brazil, Kenya's Medical Research Institute, Malaysia's ministry of health, France's Pasteur Institute, an international NGO, Médecins sans Frontières and the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (an UNDP, World Bank and World Health Organization project) associated with it. The partnership has come out with two new, non-patented malaria treatments.

The ICMR has stepped into frontier research such as stem cell research by utilizing existing resources or making new investments through extramural projects including genomics research. With the lessons learnt and with experience gained, it is proposed to expand this approach further and build new partnerships, sources said.

With threats accompanied with globalisation in the form SARS, Avian Flu, HIV, AIDS, the country is also taking the help of foreign institutes and organizations through PPPs to curb them by sharing information and increasing surveillance.