PUNE: Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV) launched a dedicated rabies laboratory on Tuesday which was World Rabies Day.
The lab is expected to enhance rabies surveillance in the country. Balram Bhargava, secretary of the department of health research and director-general of ICMR dedicated the lab to the nation.
ICMR-NIV also organized a webinar on rabies. A large number of scientists, medical faculty, researchers, and students from all over India participated. Rabies continues to be a major public health burden in India. The disease kills around 60,000 annually worldwide, with about 20,000 of these deaths in India alone.
Though rabies is 100% preventable with vaccination, the general awareness about the disease remains quite low, leading to deaths, experts attending the webinar said.
A global call for action, called ‘Zero By 30’ has been initiated by the World Health Organisation and other agencies, for eliminating dog-mediated human rabies deaths by 2030.
Several experts in the field of virology including Priya Abraham, director, ICMR-NIV, Nivedita Gupta (scientist F) and in-charge of virology unit of ICMR, state surveillance officer Pradip Awate, medical expert Reeta S Mani, additional professor of neurovirology, NIMHANS, Bengaluru and medical expert Anita Mahadevan, head, department of neuropathology, NIMHANS and medical expert Sudhir Patsute, medical superintendent of Naidu Infectious Diseases hospital, Pune spoke on rabies.
