The Maharashtra government has decided to use the Mumbai-based Haffkine Institute for Training, Research and Testing for further research work on Covid. The institute, set up in 1899, is the country’s first biological research facility.

It has been asked by the State Medical Education Department to prepare a plan for investigation, research and training in the next three weeks, keeping in mind the pandemic, a press statement issued by the State Government said.

At a review meeting held on Wednesday, the State Medical Education Minister, Amit Deshmukh directed the institute to lay greater emphasis on investigation, research and training, keeping in mind the pandemic situation in the state.

Deshmukh said the institute has developed several vaccines against cholera, rabies, snake bites, and scorpion bites. Tests for Covid are being conducted in public and private laboratories across the state and the institute should join this effort.

The Haffkine Institute should present a blueprint for future research process and a roadmap for the research methodology it will undertake, the statement said.

Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian scientist and a student of the Louis Pasteur, arrived in India in March 1893, and took up research on cholera disease cases in Kolkata. His work evoked much interest and when a plague epidemic broke out in Mumbai and Pune in 1896, the then Governor of Bombay invited Haffkine to the city and provided him laboratory space to continue research in the state.

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