Pondicherry University signs agreement with five ICMR institutes

NEW DELHI: Pondicherry University (PU), Puducherry signs an agreement with five Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) institutes. This will help the institutions in sharing and effective utilization of the resources available.

Pondicherry university signed the agreement with five ICMR institutes including ICMR–regional medical research centre, Dibrugarh, Assam, ICMR-regional medical research centre, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, ICMR–national institute of research in tribal health, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, ICMR–Rajendra memorial research institute of medical sciences, Patna, Bihar and ICMR–vector control research centre, Puducherry (nodal centre).

In this agreement, a new postgraduate course in public health entomology (MSc PHE) will be offered in all five ICMR institutes under the the national public health entomology [NPHE] programme with affiliation to Pondicherry University. The students joining the programme will be given a Rs 20,000 monthly stipend from ICMR.

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This initiative will enable the institutions to work on extramural and intramural-funded projects, give collaborative guidance for PhD students, offer diploma and certificate programmes in multiple fields, develop educational resources, hold conferences, and workshops, exchange faculty and students and share in-house facilities.

The directors of the ICMR institutions, Ashwani Kumar, Kanwar Narain, Rajnikant Srivastava, Aparup Das, Krishna Pandey participated. Head of international health and human resource development, Mukesh Kumar and ICMR Delhi deputy director general Dr. Lakshminarayanan also participated in the event.

While addressing the occasion, Kumar expressed his gratitude to PU vice-chancellor for extending the collaboration through the agreement and letting the subject of 'Entomology' grow. He emphasised the need for training entomologists at a national level to tackle wide-spread problems such as