18 April 2004	Sunday	27 Safar 1425

KARACHI, April 17: Growing exposure of locals to a wide range of diseases with inadequate provision of quality health care, including cost effective medication , increases urgency for better coordination among government organizations, medical community, researchers and clinicians as well as pharmacologists.

These views were expressed by some speakers at the inaugural session of the third national conference on "pre-clinical and clinical research on products of biological origin" on Saturday.

The event was organized by the Pakistan Society of Pharmacognosy and the Department of Pharmacognosy, Pharmacy Faculty, Karachi University.

Conference Chairman Dr Syed Mansoor Ahmed said that the theme was particularly selected to develop a consensus opinion regarding strategy to avert ailments which were generally preventable and largely curable.

According to him, research being conducted by some higher educational and research institutions like Karachi University with regard to pharmacological compounds based on indigenous and natural resources needs to be complemented by clinical research at medical colleges.

Referring to the problems being faced by health ministry, researchers, medical practitioners and pharmaceutical industry in their respective capacities, he said that the origin of all these problems was the lack of coordination and misconceptions.

The vice-chancellor of Dow University of Health Sciences, Dr Masood Hameed, who was the chief guest at the event, referred to the endeavours being made to promote a strong culture of clinical research at Dow Medical College, Sindh Medical College and Ojha Institute of Chest Diseases.

According to him, it is under the very efforts that incentives are being offered to 47 professors and around 100 associate and assistant professors of these colleges to come forward with research initiatives mainly centred on community health-based research programmes.

He elaborated that measures were also being adopted to project the outcome of these initiatives among the masses. In this regard, he referred to the recently launched study on "benefits of hand-washing" which describes that how people could be protected from 20 to 22 different diseases.

Prof Hameed said that well-documented facts based on some research could also help the masses adopt some simple steps to avert water-borne diseases presently having a heavy toll among local population.

The inaugural session was also addressed by Dean of Pharmacy Faculty Prof Anwar Ejaz Beg.

Later, books on "Arthritis" co-authored by Dr Syed Mansoor Ahmed, Munir Anwar and Farah Said and another on "Hepatitis" by Dr Haider Raza and Prof Mansoor were formally launched by Prof Masood Hameed Khan.

Shields as token of appreciation for PhD students of the department were awarded to Ambreen Farah, Zahid Khan, Mehjabeen, Noor Jehan and a few others.

The three-day conference is being attended by around 100 pharmacologists, researchers and medical practitioners, including Dr Aftab Turabi, Dr Jamal Ara, Dr Tariq Mehmood, Dr Abdul Rashid, Dr Laiq Ahmed, Dr Iqbal Memon, Dr Ghulam Murtaza, Dr Mubashir Sheikh, Dr Obaid Ali, Dr Sarwat Rehman, Dr Shagufta Tahir, Dr Iqbal Alam, Dr Qaiser Hussein. -APP