The Department of Health Research (DHR) is planning to set up a laboratory network for the research on viral and other infectious diseases in the next few years, as the country has limited infrastructure for early diagnosis and treatment of viral diseases.

The department will establish six regional laboratories, 10 state level laboratories, and 30 district level laboratories during the current five year plan period as part of setting up the network.

The six regional labs will be established in North, South, East, West, Central and North-Eastern parts and preferably at ICMR institutes. They will be expected to carry out serology, RT-PCR, isolation, fluorescence microscopy, tissue culture and sequencing for viruses listed above or any other new viral pathogen.

It is proposed to create state-of-the-art facilities in these regional labs so that it could achieve the objectives in research, continuous monitoring and surveillance of existing as well as new viral and other strains and handling viruses, etc. with a potential of being used as agents of bioterrorism, capacity building, diagnosis, development of diagnostic kits etc. An amount of upto Rs.15 crore per lab is proposed for developing the infrastructure including civil works, furniture etc.

The total project cost is estimated at around Rs.900 crore. In a phased manner, it is proposed to establish 28 state level labs, one lab in each State and Union Territory preferably in the government medical colleges or hospitals. The government is planning to sanction upto Rs.5 crore for each such lab.

The proposal also aims at creating 200 district level labs. States will be requested to identify one such lab to cover a cluster of three to four districts depending upon their requirement. Apart from the non-recurring grant of up to Rs.1 crore per district level institution, recurring grant will also be extended for a period of five years for engaging trained technical man power on contractual basis, training, consumables and contingency expenditure.

In India, during the last 30 years, 30 different outbreaks have been recorded, of which 21 have been due to different viruses. There are very few laboratories all over the country which have the potential to work on viruses. Entire burden of diagnosing diseases of suspected viral etiology all across the country is mainly borne by ICMR’s National Institute of Virology, Pune and National Centre for Disease Control, Delhi.

The network of laboratories, having capacity to handle all human pathogenic viruses as well as emerging- reemerging viral diseases and to develop tools for prevention, will have infrastructure for timely identification of viruses and other agents. The scheme will develop capacity for identification of novel and unknown viruses and other organisms and emerging- reemerging viral strains and develop diagnostic kits.

Priority will be given to develop infrastructure and expertise for diagnosis of viruses/agents with a potential to cause outbreaks and/or which are responsible for significant disease burden like measles, influenza viruses (A, B and C), respiratory syncitial virus, polio, hepatitis A, E, rotavirus, enteroviruses, dengue, chikungunya, JE etc. These laboratories will be expected to develop expertise for diagnosis of specific viruses circulating in their geographic area.