The parliamentary panel observed that health challenges

in India are "huge and complex" due to its large population, rapid industrialisation, demographic transition, huge maternal and infant mortality and high burden of diseases.

To address the high disease burden, the national health research agenda needs to be updated constantly and indigenous health products would need to be developed to combat these challenges, the panel said.

"A paradigm shift in pursuing the national research agenda will therefore need to be made to address these challenges but this is not possible with the current low budget allocation to DHR," it said.

"The committee also takes note of the (health) secretary's submission that it takes two and a half billion dollars to develop a new drug from scratch and it needs thousands of scientists working on it at different stages," the panel said.

It observed that if the objective of providing affordable quality healthcare for people and translating research outputs into measurable social and national outcome is to be realised, investments in health research will have to be increased "substantially".

"The committee lends its support to the department's demand for additional funds to the tune of Rs 835 crore for 2017-18 and recommends that the finance ministry should increase the budgetary allocation to the DHR so that it is able to ensure continuity in critical healthcare research," it said.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)