Tamil Nadu

Parasitic diseases can affect the economy, says Vice-Chancellor

SIVAGANGA: “Parasitic diseases have potential to affect the health and economy of the country in the longer run. The challenges posed by the diseases have to be viewed seriously,” according to P. Ramasamy, Vice-Chancellor of Alagappa University.

He was presiding over the inauguration of a five-day international seminar-cum-workshop on “Advances in modern biotechnology and molecular techniques in veterinary parasitology: diagnosis, chemotherapy and control,” organised by School of Biotechnology, Alagappa University at Karaikudi.

Mr. Ramasamy said that many of the parasitic diseases such as dengue, malaria, Japanese encephalitis, chikukngunya, leptospirosis, etc. had increased manifold among the human and livestock basically because of the climate change and prevailing favourable conditions for parasites.

There were an estimated 10 million cases of tuberculosis in 1980s, of which about 25 per cent was infectious. In the early 1990s, 19 million people showed symptoms of filariasis and 25 million were deemed to be hosts to the parasites. “Although the death rate due to parasitic diseases is low, it certainly affects the human efficiency and physical activities resulting in overall loss to the country,” Mr. Ramasamy added.

Inaugurating the seminar, K.R. Periakaruppan, Minister for Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments, said the impacts of the diseases to the human and cattle had to be intensively studied.

K. Dharmalingam, Senior Professor of Biotechnology, Madurai Kamaraj Univeristy, said the standard of research activities and interest in research was on the decline. R.E.B. Hanna, Veterinary Sciences Division, Agri Food and Biosciences Institute, Northern Ireland, said that drug resistance nature of parasites had become a serious concern among the scientific community throughout the world.

Scientists were in a position to discover new type of drugs to fight parasitic diseases.

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