New Delhi, July 9 (IANS) Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare Jagat Prakash Nadda will lay the foundation stone of the ICMR Centre for High Altitude Medicine and Public Health Research at Keylong in Lahaul & Spiti district, Himachal Pradesh, on July 11, 2026, an official statement said on Thursday. The Centre 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 Centre is being set up by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) under the Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.

As the Himalayan ecosystem poses distinct public health challenges, the Keylong centre will generate context-specific scientific evidence and scalable solutions across a wide research mandate, the statement from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said. Himalayan ecosystem is marked by high altitude, extreme climatic conditions, difficult terrain and rising climate variability — that shape disease patterns, healthcare access and emergency response. Hence, the Centre will generate scientific evidence and scalable solutions relevant to high-altitude physiology and acclimatisation, mountain medicine, climate-sensitive and emerging diseases, infectious and non-communicable diseases, maternal and child health, nutrition, mental health, environmental and occupational 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. The Centre will have year-round access to high-altitude and tribal populations in a strategically important border region, enabling long-term cohort studies and field research on environmental determinants of health. It will 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 India and abroad, creating an ecosystem for translational research and policy support, the statement noted.

—IANS