Vaginal gel: ICMR says a long way to go

Karims findings generated an excitement in the scientific world,resulting in WHO taking up the process of drawing guidelines for manufacturing,licensing and selling the product. Currently,the South African Government owns the licence for producing the gel.

We have been working with India on the South-South collaboration to fight HIV since last year,which is a collaborative effort with ICMR and the South African Government for joint research on HIV. I was invited for a talk to ICMR to discuss our findings after a series e-mail exchanges,and I got a very positive response from the academicians, Karim,who is in Delhi to attend the International Union Against Sexually Transmitted Infections (IUASTI) conference,told The Indian Express.

The ICMR,however,sounded a cautionary note. This was the first such interaction with South African experts on the subject. We have been engaged in interactions in the South-South HIV collaboration,and we will work towards planning our own research after this. It is too early to say whether it can be implemented in India yet, Dr K Satyanaryana,Head,Reproductive Health Research at ICMR,said.