NEW DELHI: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the apex body in India for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research, has set a target of eliminating malaria by 2030 in the country.
In India, the malaria burden has already declined by over 80 per cent since the year 2000 when nearly 2.03 million cases of the disease were registered. Malaria deaths in the country have also come down by over 90% as seen in the drop from 932 deaths in 2000 to 85 in 2018.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that causes symptoms such as fever, tiredness, vomiting and headache. It can cause seizures, coma and even death in extreme cases.
The Council launched the Malaria Elimination Research Alliance to prioritize, plan, conduct, scale up and translate relevant research in a coordinated and combinatorial way in order to have a tangible impact of this research on the population at risk of malaria.
“The alliance does not intend to duplicate international efforts rather complement this on a national scale while contributing to the broader global agenda,” a statement by ICMR said.
The purpose of the initiative is to identify, articulate, prioritize and respond to the research needs of the country to eliminate malaria from India by 2030, it said.
“It will facilitate trans-institutional coordination and collaboration around a shared research agenda which responds to not only to programmatic challenges and addresses gaps in available tools but also proactively contribute to targeted research.”
One of the oldest medical research bodies in the world, the ICMR has attempted to address the growing demands of scientific advances in biomedical research on the one hand, and to the need of finding practical solutions to health problems of the country.