Aiming to support innovative and basic research on strategies to prevent HIV infection and transmission that will advance the field of HIV/AIDS prevention through the collaborative efforts of Indian and US investigators and their institutions, India and the United States will soon start Bilateral Collaborative Research Partnerships (CRP) on the Prevention of HIV/AIDS.

For this purpose, the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India and the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), United States of America had way back in June 2006 signed a Joint Statement for Collaboration on Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS to promote cooperative research and research training focused on HIV/AIDS.

The focus of the joint research will be on fostering development of a multi-faceted approach to the prevention and management of STIs and HIV including the role of other microbes (i.e. viruses, bacteria, etc.), behavioural and social interactions, epidemiological factors and co-morbidities associated with HIV transmission, including malignancies associated with other viral infections such as Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpes virus (KSHV) and human papillomavirus (HPV).

The collaborative research will address mainly the aspects of STIs and HIV/AIDS prevention like Identification of behavioural, social, epidemiological and/or infectious disease relationships that represent barriers to, and/or opportunities for novel prevention/management strategies; Conduct of focused microbiological, epidemiological, translational and behavioral and social science interventions and testing that addresses the implementation and/or understanding of the impact of a prevention/management strategy; Acquisition of knowledge that assists the operational aspects of developing and testing prevention/ intervention strategies for HIV/AIDS and/or interventions/treatments for associated co-morbidities; Preclinical research to establish clear evidence of physiologically-relevant anti-HIV activity; and Research to develop approaches to measuring and improving acceptability of and adherence to prevention modalities.

In India, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has invited proposals for this Indo-US joint research from scientists holding permanent positions and working in universities, research institutions, public and private organizations (recognized by DSIR) for the broad research areas like Infectious Diseases and HIV/AIDS Co-morbidities, Behavioural and Social Sciences, Epidemiology (Behavioural and Population), Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Drug Use and Abuse, Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (MTCT) and Cancer as a co-morbidity of HIV infection and other STDs.