Importance of human vaccine development stressed

Islamabad : An expert-level meeting on human vaccine development held at the Comstech secretariat. Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Shibli Faraz chaired the meeting.

In introductory remarks, Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary, Coordinator General, Comstech welcomed the participants and said that it is our national responsibility to use our capabilities to help in the development of human vaccines. He assured that Comstech would provide every sort of possible support in this regard. In his remarks, Shibli Fraz emphasised over vaccination development for meeting local needs as well as for export purpose. He said that we should be ready for the future challenges. The federal government is fully ready to cooperate in this regard, he remarked.

The meeting was attended by representatives from private sector leading pharmaceutical companies. In addition, senior officials and experts of premier R&D institutions of Pakistan i.e. National Institute of Health (NIH), International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, National Center for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Faisalabad, Centre Excellence for Molecular Biology, University of Punjab were present in the meeting.

Detailed discussion was carried out for the enabling role of the Government of Pakistan. Pharmaceutical companies explained in depth the bottlenecks faced by the industries to stay abreast with changes in the manufacturing of vaccines and biologics. Minister for Science and Technology entrusted responsibility to COMSTECH and NIH for preparing a position paper to facilitate the industries and create sustainable linkage between industry and R & D institutions of Pakistan.