India well placed to respond to future infectious diseases, says CEPI CEO

India’s ingenuity has been in releasing the vaccines at such a large scale in a short time saving millions of lives around the world, he said

Hyderabad: India’s concentration of talent and capability in development of medicine and its leadership in G20 position will transform how it responds future infectious diseases, said Dr Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer of Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

“We don’t know when and where the next disease is coming next. Closer interaction between humans and animals is going to be involved. We learn to live this new era of epidemics and climate change. If we focus on innovation and collaboration, we can take on the challenge and even prevent the next pandemic,” he said in his plenary talk on the first day of BioAsia 2023.

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CEPI has embarked on reducing vaccine development timelines to 100 days. “We proposed to develop a global library of prototype new vaccines. How do we use the global virus library if we haven’t encountered a virus before? The idea is to adapt a vaccine that we have against the new viruses quickly. We need a systematic preparedness that involves starting immediately, doing Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, capturing data on safety and helping the regulators get to the point,” he said.

India’s ingenuity has been in releasing the vaccines at such a large scale in a short time saving millions of lives around the world . This mitigated economic losses. India needs to export its scientific and manufacturing know-how to the world through collaborations, he said.