New Delhi, March 21 In a bid to boost research, diagnostics, and preparedness for disease outbreaks, the Central government has approved 165 bio-safety laboratories in the country, said Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Prataprao Jadhav in the Parliament on Friday.
The labs approved under the scheme “Setting up of a Nationwide Network of Laboratories for Managing Epidemics and National Calamities”, include 11 biosafety levels - 3 (BSL-3) labs, while 154 are BSL-2.
Biosafety laboratories are categorised based on risk levels (BSL-1 to BSL-4), with BSL-4 being the highest containment level for handling dangerous pathogens, and BSL-1 being for basic teaching labs with minimal risk.
In addition, 21 other bio-safety laboratories have been established at various institutes of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), having equipped with different levels of biosafety such as BSL-4 (1), BSL-3 (8) and BSL-2 (12), said Jadhav in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
Further, the MoS said that since the year 2021, “a total of 42 Virus Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDL)" have been approved under the scheme. Of these 41 labs are BSL-2 and 1 lab is BSL-3.
These labs are mainly located in the Microbiology Departments of various medical colleges and research institutions, Jadhav said.
He added that “out of 42 VRDLs, 38 labs are functional since these are reporting the testing data on the ICMR-NIE portal”.
Meanwhile, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) also has funded 5 BSL/ABSL-3 labs under the Intensification of Research in High Priority Areas (IRHPA) programme.
Based on inputs from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), 26 bio-safety laboratories have been established in various institutes of DBT.
According to the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), 9 bio-safety laboratories have been established in various institutes of ICAR.
As per information provided by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), 11 bio-safety laboratories have been established in various institutes of CSIR, Jadhav said.
“These labs are mandated to conduct diagnosis and research on mainly viral pathogens of public health importance. The testing data are fed on the dedicated data portal setup at ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE), Chennai, which also has a data-sharing interface with the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) portal. The laboratory is considered functional once the lab starts reporting on the data portal,” Jadhav said.
Notably, the funds from the scheme are utilised for the upgradation of infrastructure, procurement of equipment, consumables, and manpower support.
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