The pandemic has highlighted the importance of strong India-US collaboration: Taranjit Sandhu, Ambassador to US

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of strong India-US collaboration, India’s Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu has said.

Noting that India’s partnership with the US in health sciences and technologies is longstanding, the senior diplomat said research and innovation institutions of both the countries are engaged in understanding important chronic and infectious diseases and in developing therapeutics and diagnostics.

“COVID-19 has made us recognise the necessity for collaborations quite ever before. Our Prime Minister has emphasised a worldwide coordinated response to affect the challenges whilst we work to strengthen our domestic capacities to affect this crisis,” Sandhu said during a virtual interaction with eminent Indian-American scientists on Thursday.

India and therefore the us have closely collaborated in combating diseases like tuberculosis; cancer; HIV; eye diseases and environmental health research, he said.

There are over 200 ongoing NIH-funded projects in India, involving 20 Institutes from the NIH network and a number of other eminent institutions in India.

“A recent successful example of our co-operation is that the development of the ROTAVAC against rota virus. Such collaborations are going to be critical within the fight against COVID-19,” Sandhu said.

“From the initial days of the outbreak, our scientists and institutions are actively engaged in exchange of data . whilst both our countries are focused on combating the disease domestically, NIH and Indian Council for Medical Research have close and announced a call to support collaborative research and training through India-US partnership to know the disease,” he said.

The India-US Science and Technology endowment has involved proposals that might enable scientists to hold out joint research and work towards development of latest technologies, tools, safety, outreach and also support public-private virtual networks to fight COVID-19, he added.

Indian pharmaceutical companies are global leaders in producing affordable low-cost medicines and vaccines and can play a crucial role within the fight against this pandemic, Sandhu said.

“As I speak here today, there are a minimum of three ongoing collaborations between Indian vaccine companies with US-based institutions. These collaborations would be beneficial not just to us, except for the billions who would wish to be vaccinated against COVID-19 across the planet ,” Sandhu said.

Asserting that innovation are going to be the key driver in pandemic response and recovery, the Indian diplomat said that the tech-companies and start-ups have already begun to require the lead during this direction. Telemedicine and telehealth will evolve as will other digital platforms across sectors, he noted.

India, he said, takes immense pride within the contribution of doctors, scientists, academicians of Indian-origin, who came to the us within the pursuit of educational excellence and have distinguished themselves in diverse fields.

Your contributions are widely acknowledged and deeply appreciated by the political leadership within us, he added.