ABSTRACT
India, a still developing industrialised country, is debating the establishment of a national biobank or national repository (NR), an initiative open to ethical, legal, and social scrutiny. This biobank initiative started with the idea to provide a centralised repository for the randomly and unsystematically collected and stored biospecimens and health data at various research centres, including universities, public and private hospitals, and research institutes. The mapping and enumeration of such banks is difficult to comprehend and describe in brief. The biological specimens and health data were generally gathered through two processes: first, through genetic, epidemiological, and carrier-screening programmes in the community; and second, from individuals and patients in hospital situations. At a community level, it is the population geneticist, local hospitals, and physical anthropologists who have been involved in data generation; at a hospital level, it is individual patients who provide data through undergoing testing or tissue donations.
