ISLAMABAD, March 9: The Research and Development Fund Committee of Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) has approved a Rs2.212 million project to combat leishmaniasis.
The results of this project would be beneficial to those working on drug designing and bio-active molecules in search of therapeutic agents while on the academic side, the education and training of students will be helpful for scientific human resource development.
The approval was made in a meeting held here on Tuesday with Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunications Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari in the chair. The main objective of the project is to synthesise a range of disulfides and related compounds as potential leish manicidal agents assessed through a battery of in vitro and in vivo assay.
Hopefully, such investigations would lead to the development of more specific synthetic anti-leishmaniasis drugs and a major improvement in our leishmanicidal armamentarium.
The project titled "Synthesis of Leishmanicidal Chemotherapeutic Agents" would be carried out by HEJ Research Institute, University of Karachi, under the supervision of Dr Khalid M. Khan, who holds a PhD in organic chemistry.
The project, scheduled to be completed within three years, has been approved for funding by the PTCL's R&D Fund Committee following media reports in recent weeks about the outbreak of skin disease leishmaniasis in parts of Sindh and Balochistan.
Leishmaniasis is a major parasitic disease spread by the bite of some species of sand flies that thrive on deserted and dirty places. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, over 350 million people worldwide are at risk of this disease. Most of the affected countries are in the tropics and subtropics. The current status shows that the disease is rising in Pakistan.
The disease has spread throughout the country with high endemicity in Balochistan and in northern parts of the country. The committee was told that leishmaniasis had spread in the western belt of Dadu and Larkana districts and 7,000 cases had been reported in Dadu and 3,000 cases in Larkana district during the previous year.
