A three-day symposium by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will get underway here on Wednesday with an aim to strengthen India’s anti-doping measures and make the country, a regional leader in the field.

The third edition of the meet will witness 200-plus participants from 56 countries, WADA Officials, representatives and experts from different national anti-doping organisations, Athlete Passport Management Units (APMU) and WADA accredited laboratories.

The National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) is in the process of setting up an APMU in India as the symposium aims to “create the necessary expertise in the country and will help the Indian Sports by strengthening the Anti-doping programme of India and also enable us to become a regional leader in anti-doping,” state a PIB release.

The main topic of discussion in this symposium will be recent trends, successes and challenges with the ABP, managing confounding factors affecting the steroidal module, evolving strategic testing for the ABP etc and will help WADA to work towards the detection and eradication of doping in sports through APMUs.

The first two editions of the symposium were held in Qatar (2015) and Rome (2018).

Indian athletes’ success story in the recent past has coincided with the rise of doping menace in the country as well.

Recently, the build-up to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, saw five athletes, including two from the para discipline, test positive for banned substances as their names were then struck off the list.

According to a 2021 WADA report, India (152) ranked third, marginally behind Russia (167) and Italy (157), in terms of doping violations reported in 2019 with bodybuilding, weightlifting and athletics adding mostly to the country’s infamy.