More than ₹10,000 crore are earmarked for the department of health research (DHR) and Indian council for medical research (ICMR) in the 12^th Five Year Plan, which is almost five times more than the funds received in the 11^th Plan. This was revealed by the union health minister, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad recently at the inauguration of Asia's first biosafety level-IV laboratory at Pune.

According to Mr Azad, "It is a matter of satisfaction that "Health" has been given a central position in the 12^th Plan and the outlay for health, including health research, has gone up substantially."

The major schemes to be rolled out in the area of health research during the 12^th Plan period:

â–  Establishment of multidisciplinary research units in 150 government medical colleges
â–  Setting up of 50 rural health research units at block level
â–  Establishment of a network of 250 laboratories at regional, state and district level for managing epidemics
â–  Grant-in-aid to researchers on projects involving development of affordable technologies, reagents and methods for public use
â–  Strengthen the existing ICMR institutes and set-up new centres in deficit areas
â–  Suggest and regularly update standard treatment guidelines
â–  Bench mark and cccredit health research institutions
â–  Support human esource development for producing qualified researchers