AGRA, Dec 15:
Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad today said the Aam Aadmi Party was in a quandary about Government formation in Delhi, as its leaders have found the reality “very different from the dreamworld they had been living in”.
The number of seats they have won is far beyond their expectations, and “with no experience of running a Government” they are finding it hard to come to terms with the reality, Azad told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.
On the Congress party’s support to AAP, the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare said elections are held for the purpose of forming Governments, so the Congress was willing to support the AAP. But it was strange that the APP was putting conditions for the support.
He said the practice was that the supporting party lays down conditions, but it was the other way round in the case of AAP. “Have you ever seen a party laying down conditions to those who extend it support in the formation of Government?” he asked.
Meanwhile, the Union Health Minister said a network of viral and other infectious diseases research laboratories was being set up across the country by the Indian Council for Medical Research and the Department of Health Research (DHR) to “build capacity for handling outbreaks and conduct research on all emerging, re-emerging and common viral diseases as well as other infectious diseases.
Inaugurating the Golden Jubilee Symposium at the National Jalma Institute for Leprosy and Other Mycrobacterial Diseases, he said from just two laboratories in 2009 — one each at Pune and Delhi, the network of HINI laboratories had been expanded to 45 in just one year. In the past four years, 16 new BSL II and two BSL III labs have also been set up.
A BSL IV laboratory, possibly the first in Asia, for human medicine has been set up at Pune to deal with most dangerous lethal infections like haemorrhagic fever.
Azad said under a new DHR scheme the network would be expanded to 160 laboratories – 120 in medical colleges and 30 at state level and 10 regional laboratories.
The health research field has got a boost with the setting up of two new institutes.
He said inspired by the Jalma institute, the Department of Health Research has decided to replicate the model in 15 States in the next two years. Azad said that with introduction of multi-drug treatment of leprosy, the cases of leprosy has been reduced from six million to less than three lakh. (PTI)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel