Public talk on challenges to translate science into public health benefit held

IAVI and CDC lauds govt’s initiative on HIV research through pro active programmes

Dr Rajat Goyal, Country Director – India, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and Timothy H Holtz, Program Director at Division, Global HIV and TB/India, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) addressed a public talk, recently, around the challenges of translating science into public health benefit.

The experts lauded Government of India’s commitment to furthering HIV research, through their proactive programmes and initiatives in partnership with countries including South-Africa and Netherlands, for the same.

Dr Goyal and Dr Holtz, also discussed the role of partnerships in translating science into public health benefit – in the backdrop of lessons from HIV, how vaccines and PrEP can propel change, recent breakthroughs in vaccine research, viable products including PrEP, impact of external environment and global geo-political shifts on translation of products, need for creative North-South, South-South and multi-sectoral partnerships in expediting innovative product development.

Highlighting India’s role in propelling global R&D efforts, Dr Rajat Goyal, Country Director – India, IAVI, said, “Globally, innovative programmes have been launched, to tackle infectious diseases. Due to this, there is a diversity of programmes that are currently working in silos. These programmes must be integrated so that we all can address the problem, together. For this, countries across the world must develop end-to-end research capability which will, in turn, accelerate outcomes.”

“It is time that we started looking at in-country leadership and a huge amount of partnership, focussed on translational research,” he added.

Sharing his experience on how we can accelerate HIV treatment prevention, Dr Holtz, said, “We don’t think PrEP is a magic bullet. There is cost, coverage, adherence and risk-consultation issues. But we need to keep searching for a safe, accessible and effective biomedical intervention. The implementation of PrEP has already begun in many countries. Hopefully, we will get a highly effective vaccine soon and with that, we could control the HIV epidemic, in our lifetime.”