SII’s Adar Poonawalla said on September 1 that India’s first indigenously developed quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Vaccine (qHPV) vaccine for the prevention of cervical cancer will be launched in a few months.
He further added that the vaccine will be available to the people in an affordable price range. 200-400.
“Cervical cancer vaccine will be cheap and available in the range of 200-400. However, the final price is yet to be decided”, he said.
Adar Poonawalla on Thursday attended an event to announce the scientific completion of the vaccine along with Union Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh.
Scientific completion means that research and development activities related to vaccines have been completed and the next step will be to make them available to the public.
Speaking at the event, Singh said that COVID has raised awareness about preventive health care which has led to the development of vaccines such as those against cervical cancer.
He said, “Schemes like Ayushman Bharat have made us think about preventive health care and now we can afford it. The Department of Biotechnology has taken the lead in this matter and is in collaborative mode.”
“Scientific efforts sometimes don’t get the scale of the recognition they deserve. That’s why this event is meant to celebrate that scientific perfection,” he said.
Poonawalla also said, “The vaccine will be made available through the government channel first and some private partners will also be involved from next year.”
Poonawalla also said that there is a plan to make 200 million doses and the vaccine will be given in India first and only then it will be exported to other countries.
Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology said that more than 2000 volunteers across the country participated for this vaccine.
“As a private-public partnership is becoming increasingly important in research like this, this co-creation is going to make all the difference in the world,” he said.
Dr N Kalaiseelvi, Director General, CSIR said that this is the first step and research in this area and will continue to do so.
“This government has taken the utmost care to come up with this type of innovation, which has made us ‘self-reliant’,” she said.
According to officials, the qHPV vaccine CERVAVAC has demonstrated strong antibody response that is about 1,000-fold higher for all targeted HPV types and across all doses and age groups.
Cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer in women in the age group of 15 to 44 years in India.
The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) in July had given market authorization to SII to make a vaccine against cervical cancer.
(with inputs from PTI)
catch all business News, market news, today’s fresh news events and breaking news Updates on Live Mint. download mint news app To get daily market updates.