NIF extends its tie-up with ICMR

National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for validation of practices received from traditional knowledge holders from throughout the country.

The cooperation between the two organisations will focus on grassroots traditional knowledge based practices that incorporate either use of new medicinal plants not reported in any Indian codified literature or new use of already mentioned medicinal plants or multi-herb formulations for drug development.

V M Katoch, director general, ICMR, and Anil Gupta, executive vice-chairperson of NIF, an autonomous body under the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India have signed the MoU at ICMR Headquarters at New Delhi on Thursday. The MoU would be valid for another five years till 2016.

This collaboration will strengthen the synergy achieved between informal, uncodified and non-classical health related people's knowledge and the apex institution for medical research in the country.

It will also serve to recognise, respect and reward the knowledge rich, economically poor indigenous people which may have made innovations in traditional knowledge for inclusive development in the 'decade of innovation', an official statement said.

The collaboration comes in tune with the ethical guidelines issued by ICMR on clinical trials with herbal medicines based on folklore knowledge.

While the community practices will be documented and sourced from the NIF database developed mainly with the assistance of Honey Bee Network Volunteers, the cooperation will be guided by prior informed consent of the knowledge providers, said the statement.

Under the collaboration, ICMR will work towards validating the safety and efficacy of the practices that are claimed to have therapeutic value by grassroots healers. Any benefit generated will largely go to the traditional knowledge holders and partly to other stake-holders in the value chain to the extent of their involvement.