KTR urges centre to set up vaccine testing, certification laboratory in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Minister KT Rama Rao on Wednesday wrote a letter to the union minister for health and family Harshavardhan to set up vaccine testing centre and certification laboratory at Genome Valley in Hyderabad.

"Hyderabad's genome valley has been the world's vaccine capital with the production of six billion vaccines every year and one-third of the vaccines all over the world which attracted the ambassadors of 80 countries who made a visit to inquire the status of Covid vaccine," said the minister.

He said that state government had earlier requested the centre to set up the vaccine testing and certification laboratory. "During the current situation, all the things related to the vaccine manufacturing need to be expedited and there is a need for the vaccine laboratory," he said.

Rama Rao said that there is only one central drug laboratory at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh which consumes a lot of time to send the vaccine for testing and attain certification.

The minister said that the Indian Council for Medical Research has set up the country's largest national animal resource facility for bio-medical research in Hyderabad considering the significance of genome valley. The union minister was also asked to set up government medical store depot in the Telangana which are only present in the cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Karnal.