Less than $1 spent on each Indian for health research

Mysuru: At a time when healthcare risks have become one of the most difficult issues that the country is dealing with, India's per-capita expenditure on health research is less than $1. And, just 3% of this is spent on public health research.

Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) director general Dr Soumya Swaminathan said out of $1 billion that the country has been spending annually, just 1% is for healthcare and it is 0.06% of GDP. Of the total amount, only 16% is by not-for-profit institutions and 83% by pharmaceutical industry.

More investment is a must if the country wants to focus on solving health-related issues without depending on other countries, feel researchers at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, the Indian Institute of Science and the Jawaharlal Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR).

"Significant mismatches between funding and disease-burden trends must be addressed. Strategic mechanisms are needed in India to address these gaps to enable research to effectively improve public health. The government must focus on translational and implementation research. We (government departments) must complete the chain of product development and ensure it is used in the public health programme, expand clinical trial network and conduct/sponsor more multicentric trials," Soumya said.

According to Nobel Laureate professor Serge Haroche, there must be local critical thinking so that discoveries and inventions are aimed at solving problems at hand with priority.

Echoing this, GJ Samathanam, former advisor, department of Science and Technology, said: "India has a great role to play in novel drug discovery. Our scientists must take up high-risk and high resource-oriented long-term research."

Referring to Bengaluru-based Vasan Sambandamurthy and team's single dose solution to cure malaria and two-drug compounds for Ebola developed by Jayanta Haldar and team at JNCASR, scientists argued that more such discoveries will happen only if investment increases.

"Compared to Japan (77%), the US (65%), and Germany (68%), India has the least investment (30%) coming from the industry for drug discovery which is affecting the sector in which the country has a lot of potential," Samathanam said.

source; http://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/