Govt to provide funds for promoting pharmaceutical research culture: Azam Swati

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Science and Technology Azam Khan Swati on Tuesday said the government would provide sufficient funds for both private and government sectors to promote the pharmaceutical research culture in the country.

Addressing a two-day international conference on ‘Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery’, he urged Pakistani scientists to develop mutual research projects with local industry and use the expertise of their foreigner partners to stimulate Research and Development in Pakistan.

The international conference was organised by Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) in collaboration with Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), COMSTECH Islamabad, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, University of Punjab, Lahore, and Women University, Swabi.

“Our country is attaching immense importance to research and development which is reflected by allocation of Rs 52.997 billion in budget 2018-19, which is more than 53%  comparing to the previous year”, said the minister.

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Earlier, the chief organiser of the conference Prof Dr Bushra Mirza, from QAU welcomed all the distinguished guests from UK, OIC countries, Germany and Pakistan.

She said that the conference had been organized for providing an opportunity to our scientists at local level to interact on the themes under discussion and to solve the health related issues.

Former president of Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), UK, Sir John Holman said that chemical sciences had the potential to provide innovative solutions to the world’s greatest challenges in healthcare, agriculture, nutrition, food production, environment, clean water, and medicine.

Chairman Department of Pharmacy, QAU, Prof Dr Gul Majid Khan lauded the organisers and said that it was the first of its kind activity to discuss medicinal chemistry and drug discovery in Pakistan.

Advisor of the COMSTECH Dr Khurshid Hasnain, Vice Chancellors of the AWKU Mardan Prof Dr Khurshid Khan and Vice Chancellor of Woman University Swabi Prof Dr Khanzadi Fatima also addressed the conference.

It was a global conference as speakers from different countries but similar research background presented their talks.

Out of the total 38 speakers, 14 were from the UK, including eight from Oxford University, UK.

Twelve speakers were from OIC countries including Algeria, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Palestine, Egypt and one speaker from Germany while eleven speakers from various Universities of Pakistan.