Pharma Bureau Seminar on Ethics and Future of Healthcare

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Pharma Bureau Seminar on Ethics and Future of Healthcare

Pharma Bureau – a representative body of the research based multinational pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan organized a Conference on “Ethics and the Future of Healthcare” recently at the Karachi School for Business & Leadership, Karachi.

Leading health care professionals and industry leaders such as Dr. Tipu Sultan, Dr. Shaheen Sheikh, Dr. Ahson Qavi and Dr. Abdul Bari spoke at the conference and participated in panel discussions on importance of integrity, the role of ethics & future of pharma industry and the industry physician relationship. All participants agreed that compliance in the health spectrum involved going beyond laws and regulations, establishing new approaches to stakeholder interactions and of building new relationships built on trust and shared values. They also reiterated that the future for business practices should be primarily driven by values.

Speaking on the occasion Arshad Saeed Hussain, Chairman, Pharma Bureau highlighted the importance of ethics in pharmaceuticals and suggested that it is our responsibility to ensure that we operate with the highest levels of ethics and integrity in everything that we do, as our treatments directly touch the lives of patients and with this, comes greater responsibility and the relevance of ethics to pharmaceuticals and healthcare is even more paramount.

Senator Haseeb Khan in his remarks said that it is our collective responsibility to make aware, educate and equip the patients and physicians in Pakistan with the right information, the right diagnosis and the right therapies and treatments.

Speaking on the issue of counterfeits he said not long ago we have had major catastrophes where we lost a number of human lives to the hands of substandard medicines Whether it is the cardiac patients suffering in PIC, Lahore or the cough syrup that claimed the lives of so many people, these are real challenges and they are a direct result of non-compliance and failure to follow ethics in this industry. The public and private sector needs to work together to ensure that we benefit the patients in Pakistan, follow all ethical, moral and legal obligations and above all, keep the interest of the patient our top priority.

The importance of such a seminar is timely as wide spread availability of counterfeit medicines, rising incidence of improper diagnosis, quackery, non GMP compliant methods, have taken its toll and has taken too many precious lives in recent future

Dr. Sania Nishtar of Heartfile delivered the keynote address said that Regulatory challenges in the pharmaceutical sector have emerged over time due to under-resourcing of regulatory institutions and weak accountability mechanisms. These systemic constraints need to be addressed as a priority in order to achieve the goal of access to quality medicines; notwithstanding, we also need disruptive solutions, which have potential to spread a contagion of ethical behavior in the entire pharmaceutical value chain. Mass serialization of medicines with a concomitant drive to create stakeholder awareness offers such a disruptive solution.

She strongly urged the industry to rally behind such a solution, which with civil society and media engagement can be truly a game changer. Integrity is the bedrock of the relationship between the private sector and the regulator and therefore we must uphold that principle as a mechanism of safeguarding intended outcomes in the pharmaceutical sector, both from the access to medicines perspective as well as the commercial angle. She noted the difficult regulatory environment in which pharmaceutical companies operated in Pakistan.

Ayse Burcu Acarer of Novo Nordisk, Turkey also gave a presentation on the role of ethics and the future of the pharma industry which was followed by a very interesting interactive session involving participation of the audience.

2017-04-26T12:34:54+00:00