HYDERABAD: Announcing an investment of `3,382 crore, and MoUs in government and private sectors with an aim to strengthen city’s positioning as a hub for biotech and life sciences, the 14th edition of the Telangana government’s yearly flagship event, BioAsia 2017, kick-started at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) on Monday. The event was inaugurated by Governor ESL Narasimhan, in the presence of IT minister KT Rama Rao and Health minister C Laxma Reddy.
“A number of new initiatives have been launched today with an investment of about `1,700 crore including the new SEZ facility of Biological E for their manufacturing and research facility, and the 3D model of the country’s largest animal resource facility developed in partnership with the state government was unveiled.
With a cumulative investment of about `3,000 crore, these initiatives mark the beginning of the next wave of development, which I will term as Genome Valley 2.0. As one of the many steps forward, I am delighted to announce IALA for Genome Valley today which would be implemented in the cluster very soon,” said Rao.
Lauding the IT minister’s efforts towards a TB-free Telangana, the Governor said: “At this stage, when healthcare is about criticality, BioAsia becomes a very useful forum for exchange of thoughts and experiences. Not being able to afford proper healthcare, lack of funds in health sector, fighting infection are major challenges for us.
I thank KT Rama Rao for the initiative of aiming to make Telangana a TB-free state. It is high time we move pilot projects to battle diseases and I request corporate hospitals to support the initiative. There is a request to someone like Soumya Swaminathan to ensure that the labelling on medicine is readable. One last request is that drug controlling authorities take care of preventing side effects while examining medicines.”
At the programme, Genome Valley Excellence Award 2017 was awarded to Nobel Laureate Professor Kurt Wuthrichand and Worldwide Chairman Pharmaceuticals and CSO of Johnson & Johnson Dr Paul Stoffels.