Health Minister Dr Vardhan lays emphasis on disease prevention

To strengthen the system of disease control and preventive measures in the country, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday inaugurated BioSafety Laboratories (Lab-3) at the National Centre of Disease Control (NCDC).

He also inaugurated the new National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) building on the campus of NCDC.

Dr Vardhan also addressed the 110th annual day of NCDC in the presence of MoS (Health) Ashwini Kumar Choubey and other senior officials of the Health Ministry.

The laboratory complex has five floors and houses 22 Biosafety Level (BSL) II laboratories.

"Setting up of this state-of-art laboratory will give impetus to the laboratory diagnosis of various emerging diseases of public health importance. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ministry is committed to ending TB by 2025, five years ahead of the global target of 2030," he said.

"NCDC has contributed phenomenally in elimination and eradication of several diseases of public health importance such as smallpox, polio, guinea-worm, and yaws," said the health minister.

NCDC's upgradation plan is also an ambitious plan to keep pace with the changing public health needs of the country. There is a blueprint to build 50 labs in this campus alone, said Dr Vardhan.

He also stated that six centres of NCDC will soon be set up across the country in Lucknow, Ranchi, Patna, Imphal, Dimapur, and Thiruvananthapuram.

India is going to witness the elimination of diseases like tuberculosis, leprosy, measles, malaria and Kala Azar where NCDC is poised to play a very pivotal role, said the Health Minister.

"We have top laboratories in the country to fight with disease control preventive measure. Today, we have started the lab-3 at the NCDC complex. We have to work for eliminating diseases like measles, leprosy, Kala Azar and mosquito-borne diseases from the nation," he added.

Speaking to , NCDC Director Dr Sujeet K Singh said, "Laboratories are the backbone of NCDC. There are dangerous pathogens for which we require separate for each."

"At NCDC, we have more than 22 BSL (Bio-Safety Labs) which are extremely helpful in diagnosis and making preventive measures of emerging and re-emerging diseases."

NCDC functions as the nodal agency in the country for disease surveillance facilitating prevention and control of communicable diseases.

It may be noted that BSL- 2 are diagnostic services and research laboratories while BSL-3 are high containment special diagnostic services laboratories.

( With inputs from ANI )