Botanical drugs are safe, effective and affordable |
For the past 17 years, Dr Navin Khanna has been hard at work in his lab at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Delhi to develop ways to combat dengue. After developing a test kit, he and his team have acquired an international patent on the world`s first drug to combat dengue — Cipa. This comes at a time when there 25,000 deaths and 400m cases of dengue worldwide annually. The dengue fighter says that Dengue has been a health hazard since WW II. This virus is a master of deception and very difficult to pin down. It has remarkable survival skills. To start with, it has four serotypes (distinctive surface structures). Each type has more than five different genotypes (what lies within). And each genotype has been found, as recently as 10 months ago, to change into four different shapes. All this elaborate charade is to mask its true identity and evade the body`s immunological response. She adds it was a collective effort of ICGEB and Ranbaxy (later acquired by Sun Pharma) and funded by the department of biotechnology (DBT). A group of scientists in Ranbaxy was already engaged in finding an antidote for dengue using our traditional knowledge of Ayurveda. They had shortlisted 19 plant extracts, including from neem, aloe and basil, which could provide relief from dengue symptoms.
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