PROJECT 90-90-90 (NACO – ABBOTT – DSS)

The National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India has been working on the prevention and cure of AIDS in India 1992. NACO is diligently moving towards achieving the global treatment goal of 90:90:90, i.e, diagnose 90% of all HIV-positive persons, provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) for 90% of those diagnosed, and achieve viral suppression for 90% of those treated by 2020.

Under the NACP-IV (National AIDS Control Programme IV), NACO has joined hands with Abbott Laboratories Singapore Pte Ltd to supply HIV Viral Load testing machines and reagents to 64 different sites across India. This project between NACO and Abbott is expected to last for 6 years with an estimated number of 66,00,000 tests and a cost of approx. INR 450 Crores.

Abbott won this project through a tender bidding process and the Notification of Award got issued on December 30, 2017 with a crucial deadline of March 30, 2018 to supply 64 Real Time PCR Machines for Viral Load Testing at the remotest possible sites across India. DSS Imagetech Pvt. Ltd. is leading this project for Abbott Molecular as their local partner and has been associated with Abbott Molecular in India for over 15 years. As soon as the NOA was issued, DSS and the Abbott Team rolled up their sleeves to initiate the pre-installation site inspection of 64 sites. After the official contract was signed on 23rd February 2018, Abbott and DSS worked on to get the machines to India in a seemingly impossible duration of 37 days.

With close coordination between Abbott Singapore team, freight forwarders, custom clearing agents, logistics service providers, third party product suppliers, the respective site officials and NACO, DSS effectively, within a record time of 24 days, delivered all 64 units at their respective sites and 22 installations were completed by March 30th, 2018. DSS and Abbott teams worked jointly day in and out, to complete this cumbersome task without any limitations.

As on date, all 64 installations have been successfully completed and NACO is now working on to get the import license for the supply of kits to all the sites.

We hope to continue working on many such large and bigger projects with the same expertise and diligence, towards the betterment of healthcare in India.