Dear Friends,                                                            

Greetings and a hearty welcome to all delegates attending APCRICON 2007.

Incidents in the past few months have highlighted two important things.

1. Reservoir control (Dog population control).
   
   We all know that unless the population of stray and community dogs comes down drastically, inci­dence of dog bites will not decrease.
   
   In the absence of an effective dog population control programme the only preventive measure available is to provide timely post exposure prophylaxis to the dog bite victims.
    

2. Demand supply gap of cell culture vaccines
   
   Recently there was a shortage of CCVs in the private market also which once again reminds us about the imp.ortance of Intradermal Vaccination (IDRV) for overcoming this shortage.

IDRV was introduced in Uttar Pradesh in May 2006. Orissa has started implementing IDRV in April 2007.

Recently IDRV was introduced in AP In the first phase it was started on 4th June 2006 at Institute of Preven­tive Medicine, Hyderabad, by the Hon'ble Health Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Sri S Chandrasekhar.

Training of trainers (Medical Officers and Staff Nurses) is being conducted at IPM, Hyderabad. They will in turn train others in various districts of the state. It is planned to implement IDRV in the entire state from July 2007.  

An important meeting of experts was convened by NICD on 29th May 2007 to formulate and recommend uniform guidelines for the implementation of IDRV. In the country.  

I thank all the APCRI members for reposing confidence in me and giving me an opportunity to serve as the Secretary General of the Association for 2 years . 

I once again welcome all the delegates to APCRICON 2007

Hyderabad, 6th July 2007

Dr. G. Sampath
Secretary General