New Delhi | Union minister Jitendra Singh on Monday said 12,000 pregnant women have been enrolled in a large pregnancy cohort study that aims to address the problem of preterm births.
A vast repository of over 1.6 million well-characterised biospecimens and more than one million ultrasound images has been generated under the GARBH-INi initiative by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the minister said.
Singh said the initiative would help develop artificial intelligence-driven solutions to address preterm births, one of the leading causes of neonatal mortality as well as morbidity in adulthood. This was one of South Asia’s largest pregnancy cohort studies, he said.
“The outcomes of the programme include developing AI-based pregnancy dating models tailored for Indian populations, identification of microbiome-based predictors of preterm birth, rapid diagnostic tools, and genetic markers for early risk assessment… Such indigenous solutions are critical for improving maternal and child health outcomes in the country,” Singh said.
The minister was speaking at an event about disseminating learnings and outcomes of GARBH-INi (interdisciplinary group for advanced research on birth outcomes).
During his address, Singh also noted that the initiative had established a national biorepository and the GARBH-INi-DRISHTI data-sharing platform, enabling wider access for the research community and contributing to global scientific publications.
“Maternal and child health is central to India’s future growth… The children born today will define the country’s strength and productivity in 2047… Initiatives like GARBH-INi are part of a larger national mission linking science with long-term nation-building,” Singh added.
