In virtual meet with KT Rama Rao, Bill Gates says India’s vaccine coverage better than most rich countries | Hyderabad News
“In India, really there’s two things that stand out. One is creating great vaccines with global partners, including the Gates Foundation, and getting those vaccines out. India’s vaccine coverage is very impressive. It is even better than most rich countries, which is quite phenomenal,” Gates said on Thursday.
The design, development and manufacturing of vaccines was handled well by India and that ended up saving a massive number of lives, the former Microsoft boss said during a virtual fireside chat with Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao on the opening day of the two-day BioAsia 2022.
He said India has a key role to play in future for churning out better vaccines faster not just for Covid but also for HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria using new platforms, like mRNA. He said for this his foundation is working with its partners in India to build capacities in India that can be used as a standby for future pandemics.
Lauding partners like Bharat Biotech, Biological E and Serum Institute of India for setting up and doing a fantastic job, Gates said the new capacities they have created can be used for more equitable health with new tools “to make sure that when the next pandemic comes we are able to come in not just with vaccines but also diagnostics and therapeutics very rapidly”.
He also said Indian researchers can also play a key role in bringing down the cost of gene therapy, that is even considered expensive in developed markets like the US.
“We are thinking whether gene therapy can be used for things like sickle cell disease or HIV. We have to get the cost to come down by almost a factor of hundred from what it is today. The beauty of the Indi- an ecosystem is that it not only goes after innovation, but also goes after the cost issues – that’s the way to redesign things and retain the miraculous capabilities of gene therapy and yet make it available to everyone in the world. ”
Citing the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data, which attributed 1. 3 million deaths to mi- crobial resistance, Gates rooted for development of better antibiotics to tackle the disease burden that affects people mostly in the poor and developing nations.
Even as Gates hailed the role played by mRNA vaccines in fighting Covid-19, he said he still looked at HIV cure as well as nutrition at the top of the list.
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