Different ministries, political leaders, NGOs and scientists have called for accelerating the research to develop a vaccine against HIV, integrating and involving different researches and programmes going on around the world on various platforms and cutting across the geographical boundaries.

The pledge for the international cooperation came at a two-day symposium on “Accelerating India’s Response to Research for a Preventive HIV Vaccine”, devoted exclusively to HIV vaccine design and development.

The seminar was organized by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), in partnership with the Department of AIDS Control (DAC) and the Department of Health Research (DHR), the Forum of Parliamentarians on HIV/AIDS (FPA); the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI); the Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

Inaugurating the event, former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam called upon the government and the scientists to launch a national mission to develop a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. Tapping herbal solutions, timely review of findings and leads, checking contamination of blood and mounting awareness campaign should be part of this mission, he suggested.

HIV infections have declined by 56 per cent during the last decade from 2.7 lakh in 2000 to 1.2 lakh in 2009 in our country, informed Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad. “HIV was detected in India over 25 years ago. Valuable knowledge and experience has been accumulated as a result of extensive interventions for control of the epidemic and it seems to be stabilizing now. India is among the few countries which have made significant reductions in HIV infections,” he said, while addressing the gathering.

“We must find ways of developing vaccines that help us overcome the difficulties posed by nature. Insights and lessons from recent advances in the field of HIV Vaccine R&D, particularly the findings of the RV-144 and the discovery of the broadly neutralizing antibodies give us hope and a sense of optimism. Given the complexity of the task, the best minds must work together in furtherance of the objective of collaborative science. India remains committed to working towards the development of new technologies and we will provide necessary support to scientists and clinicians for this purpose,” he said.

“Our political objective is to provide our scientists with adequate resources to meet this global challenge,” Union Minister for Science and Technology Vayalar Ravi said.

“Although the right to health is a universal aspiration, the key barrier to ensuring the fulfilment of this aspiration is the inadequate development of technologies to prevent, diagnose and treat the disease. The challenges at the same time are enormous. Even if the number of new HIV infections continues to decline at current rates, there will still be more than 22 million new infections by 2015. Fewer than one in five people at greatest risk of infection have access to effective prevention programmes, such as education, condom distribution, prevention of mother to child HIV transmission, and HIV testing,” said Union Minister of State for Planning, Science and Technology Ashwani Kumar.