Bharat Biotech CMD bats for public private partnerships

October 22, 2021:

Pushing for more public private partnerships (PPPs) in vaccine production, Bharat Biotech chairman and MD Krishna Ella on Thursday said the company has successfully demonstrated how a PPP should work in the country. For their Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin, the partnership between ICMR, NIV Pune and Bharat Biotech played a significant role and all of them worked together in an open and transparent manner, he added.

If PPP worked for infrastructure projects such as airports, it should also work in science and technology, Ella said.

He was speaking at ‘Ficci HEAL 2021’ organised jointly with the ministry of health and family welfare, GoI and NITI Aayog.

With India crossing the 100-billion vaccination milestone on Thursday, Ella said a strong political commitment was shown in the country to administer the 100 crore doses. “Reaching the 1-billion vaccination mark in just nine months is a remarkable achievement for India. Bharat Biotech, too, contributed to this historic landmark,” Ella said.

The CMD of Bharat Biotech said the landmark would give confidence to the Indian vaccine ecosystem and has laid the foundation for the country taking a lead in vaccine production and technology. “India is well-positioned with Covaxin, Covishield, ZyCovD and Johnson vaccines. When it comes to vaccines, India is ahead of the game,” he said.

“Indian companies have learnt to scale up and carry out global standard clinical research. The quality standards were similar to global standards. India will soon help countries Asian, Latin America and Africa to carry out their vaccination programmes,” Ella added. FinancialExpress