Urging the medical community to develop 'much cheaper' drugs to combat HIV/AIDS, President A P J Abdul Kalam today said the available first and second line treatment of the deadly disease is still out of reach of the common man in the country.
Stating that the Indian companies have done formidable job in bringing down the price of first and second line HIV drugs, Kalam said: "Even this reduction does not make the drug affordable to the common man in our country."Speaking at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (MGIMS) at Sevagram, he said: "We have Technology Vision 2020 Document prepared by TIFAC (Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council), which indicates about the typical disease pattern which will be faced by the country during the period now to the year 2020."
"It is expected that HIV and TB combination, water borne diseases, cardiac diseases will be the predominant diseases and we have to find solutions for diagnosing and treatment," he added.
Kalam emphasised the need for providing quality health care to our rural citizens.
Commenting on the infant mortality rate, Kalam called for bringing infant mortality to less than 10 per thousand.
On the menace on malaria, he said: "Italian scientists have recently found a bacteria that lived symbiotically inside the pest. They claim that such bacteria could potentially be genetically altered later to attack the Malaria parasite when it reaches the Mosquitoes."
Source-ANI
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