By IANS
Hyderabad : Indian Immunologicals Limited (IIL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Diary Development Board, Thursday celebrated its silver jubilee.
The IIL was set up by the NDDB in October 1982 to produce foot and mouth disease vaccine with technical collaboration from the Wellcome Foundation of Britain.
Currently, the IIL ranks 8th among top Indian biotech companies and 6th among biopharma companies.
To mark the silver jubilee, the IIL honoured all senior employees who completed 25 years of service.
Speaking on the occasion, IIL chairperson Amrita Patel reiterated the company’s commitment to the society to provide affordable immunity which goes beyond mere sales of vaccines.
“Now, IIL is a complete vaccination service provider. It won the international Animal Pharma award for corporate social responsibility in 2006,” Patel said.
“Raksha-FMD” vaccine was the first product launched by the IIL in 1982. Later in 1998, it improved this to an oil adjuvanated vaccine-“Raksha-Ovac”, which confers higher level of immunity compared to the conventional vaccine.
The IIL supplies more than 80 percent of the FMD vaccine used in the FMD disease control programme in India. It is the largest manufacturer of the FMD vaccine in Asia and among the top five in the world.
Over the years, the company launched several other veterinary biologicals such as Rabies vaccine (Raksharab), a range of canine vaccines, bacterial and other viral vaccines for large and small animals.
Riding high on the success of high quality veterinary vaccines, the IIL ventured into the human health market by producing the first indigenously manufactured tissue culture rabies vaccine-“Abhayrab” for human use in 1999. It subsequently produced many human vaccines.