Daily Times

KARACHI: Jinnah Sindh Medial University Vice Chancellor Dr Tariq Rafi has deplored the state of research on diseases prevalent in the country, saying that there are no credible databases on local diseases and their underlying causes.

He said lack of such research was a serious impediment in the way of formulation of national strategies to deal with the burden of diseases and their management.

He has urged the Drugs Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) to compel pharmaceutical companies to initiate studies to ascertain causes, treatment, management and prevention of ailments in Pakistan.

“Most of the studies in the medical literature deal with diseases which are very common in Europe and America but the medical literature arriving from the West has very little information on local diseases and their causes. For instance, mouth cancer is very common in the Subcontinent including Pakistan, but the European medical books have little or no data on it,” Prof. Tariq Rafi said, while talking to newsmen after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Clinision, an internationally-acclaimed Contract Research Organisation for promotion of digital research in the field of healthcare.

Under the MoU, signed between the Clinision and Jinnah Sindh Medical University (JSMU), the internationally-acclaimed contract research organisation will provide a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) compliant digital data-capturing software ‘eTrials’ to the JSMU medial students and researchers, its training and related technical support so that research could be conducted in a paper-less environment without wasting precious time and resources involved in the digitalization of data and its analysis.

Tariq Rafi also expressed remorse over lack of national registries of various diseases, especially cancer and said that due to lack of credible data and statistics, doctors and physicians were compelled to rely on data available from foreign countries, which had no local relevance at all. “In the case of oral cancer, it is the second most common type of cancer in Sub-continent but internationally it is on eighth number, while there is no mention of use of beetle nuts as its main cause in European and American health studies,” he informed.

The JSMU vice chancellor said keeping in view these issues, their varsity had established a department of research and within a few years of its inception, JSMU faculty and researchers had got at least 256 articles published in the local and international journals in 2017 alone. “We are offering monetary incentives to the researchers who are getting their articles published while those not doing any research would be deprived of annual increments”, he said.

According to him, lack of time and resources was the biggest hurdle in conducting research in the field of medicine and healthcare but he hoped that with the technical support from the Clinision, JSMU would be able to create a culture and environment of research at its campus while this would also result in nationwide competition in the area of healthcare research.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Clinision Syed Jamshed Ahmed said their organisation had selected JSMU for provision of internationally-acclaimed eTrials software to help local researchers, especially students to use modern technology and promote a culture of scientific research at the varsity’s campus.

“We can also help JSMU in getting funds from Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), which collects two percent profit from all the pharmaceutical companies for conducting research in Pakistan. DRAP has millions of rupees lying idle in its account but this money can be used if some good research projects are submitted to the authority for funding”, he observed.

Published in Daily Times, March 21^st 2018.