THRUST ON MEDICAL RESEARCH ESSENTIAL - DR. THAKUR

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The Union Health Minister, Dr. C.P.Thakur has said that the medical education should give more emphasis in the field of research. He said the proposed health policy has taken note of this aspect and has increased the funds for medical research to two per cent by 2010. As a beginning it is planned to increase the outlay of ICMR by more than three times to Rs.1000 crore so that the frontier areas of research like genetics, genome based drugs and vaccines development can be initiated. The policy has also noted the urgent need to develop new drugs and vaccines for tropical disease such as TB, Malaria and HIV which do not attract the attention of international pharmaceutical companies. The Minister was addressing the 31st Convocation of All India Medical Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The Minister said that keeping in view the shortage of public health / family medicine specialists, the Government is planning to gradually increase the number of post-graduate seats in these disciplines so that in few years they form 1/4th of all post-graduate seats available in the country. Dr. Thakur said that the policy proposes to include newer emerging areas of medical science in the undergraduate syllabus and the government would take appropriate action to ensure creation of seats of post-graduate courses to meet the manpower needs in deficient specialities. In order to improve medical education and research, the government has notified code of ethics both for doctors and for medical researches. With the gene manipulation and stemcell research, regulatory framework is needed so that the interest of the society is taken care of, the Minister added.