WHO lab at Haffkine to fight avian flu

MUMBAI: The Haffkine Research Institute, Parel will house the city’s first laboratory to fight the dreaded Avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, within the next few months.
 
Sanctioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the laboratory will be designed as per the stringent Biosafety level 3 norms of the international body. The laboratory will be equipped to fight even the deadliest of viral attacks, like that of Hantavirus (infectious respiratory disease), Ebola virus and most importantly the human transmission of avian influenza.

“The expertise of this laboratory will also help tackle bio-terrorism or an anthrax attack,” said Dr Ranjana Deshmukh, Director, Haffkine Research Institute. The laboratory will function in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical research (ICMR) and National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), Delhi. Earlier, samples of a virus had to be sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune or Bhopal.
 
The laboratory costing Rs2.85 crore will be a pre-fabricated one. The Haffkine Institute has to set aside a considerable portion of their campus for the laboratory, which will be constructed by air-conditioning major Bluestar. “Utmost care has to be ensured about decontamination and environmental safety. Also, the laboratory should be at a distance from all other laboratories. It must also be separated from the areas that are open to unrestricted traffic flow,” added Deshmukh. The access road to the laboratory has to be huge so that big containers can be brought in with the help of cranes. Deshmukh said that training virologists to handle such biological materials will be undertaken by the institute soon. 

According to WHO statistics, till October 2007, the world over, there have been 333 cases of the avian influenza which typically affects animals and is transmitted to human beings. Of these, 240 people have died of the viral attack.

“A greater concern is that the virus will change into a form that is highly infectious to humans and will spread easily from person to person,” said Dr R Katti, State nodal officer, Integrated Disease Surveillance Project. “Each additional human case gives the virus an opportunity to improve its transmissibility in humans and hence we have to be equipped,” he added.

The first instance of the deadly avian flu virus in India was registered in Maharashtra in 2006 in Nandurbar and Dhule.