India developing own strips to test diabetes

India is working on a host of innovative technologies, including developing strips to test diabetes, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said here Tuesday.

The health ministry has launched a programme to encourage development and introduction of affordable and indigenous technologies for public health applications, Azad said after giving away awards to scientists of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) here.

The country is indigenously developing testing strips for diabetes -- work on which is in an advanced stage -- along with methods of mosquito control and diagnostic tests for TB, dengue and several other diseases, he said.

Terming the progress on the projects as "very satisfactory", Azad said work on 30 such technologies is expected to be completed by 2014.

He said the department of health research has launched several innovative schemes to expand the research base both in terms of infrastructure and human resource.

Azad said that during this year itself, three new schemes have been rolled out.

"These schemes aim to establish multi-disciplinary research units in medical colleges to considerably strengthen the fight against non-communicable diseases.

"In 35 government medical colleges, multi-disciplinary research units will be established in the current year, of which 21 have already been approved," Azad said.

The health minister presented the ICMR Awards to 51 outstanding scientists for the years 2009 and 2010 for their work in communicable and non-communicable diseases, maternal and child health and various other medical and bio-medical fields.

He expressed happiness that a good number of the awardees were women scientists.

India has been producing excellent human resource in the health field, he said.

The ICMR is the apex body in India for the formulation, coordination and promotion of bio-medical research. It is one of the oldest medical research bodies in the world.

"The human resource we (India) produce is being shared with other countries," he said, adding more than 81,000 medical professionals in the US and more than 75,000 doctors in Britain are of Indian origin.