Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda will lay the foundation stone of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) centre for high altitude medicine and public health research at Keylong, Himachal Pradesh on Saturday. The Health and Family Welfare Ministry said that the centre will strengthen climate-resilient healthcare and biomedical research across India’s Himalayan region. It will upgrade ICMR’s existing field station at Keylong into a full-fledged, multidisciplinary hub for research, innovation and capacity building focused on India’s high-altitude and climate-sensitive regions.

 

The Ministry informed that the Keylong centre will generate context-specific scientific evidence and scalable solutions across a wide research mandate including high-altitude physiology and acclimatisation, maternal and child health and disaster medicine. It will also integrate digital health platforms, telemedicine, drone-enabled healthcare logistics and real-time public health surveillance to improve delivery in hard-to-reach areas. It is expected to support national priorities in tribal health, disaster preparedness and digital health innovation, while feeding into global research on high-altitude medicine.

 

The Centre will build institutional collaborations with the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Himachal Pradesh Government, and academic and research institutions in the country and abroad. The Ministry said that the initiative advances the Government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat vision in health research and its broader push for climate-resilient, inclusive health systems.