Pharma Veterans

Impacts of COVID19 Pandemic on Pakistan II – Blog Post #465 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #465. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… While we write this, the third wave is already sweeping the country. There is every day increase in cases and fatalities. We shall come to this later. Economic repercussions are an integral part and logical consequence of any pandemic. From Spanish flu to SARS, decreased demand of goods and services, supply chain disruptions and loss of employment and income was expected and seen. COVID19 is no different. Because of worldwide closures, there was major disruption in production and shipment of goods. As soon as situation got better, the prices increased manifold a

Impacts of COVID19 Pandemic on Pakistan I – Blog Post #464 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #464. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. COVID19 Pandemic has hit the whole world severely. Pakistan is no exception. The assessment of impact is usually determined and published by the government as it has the resources required to collect data and analyze it. Historically, government figures in any area have been received with doubt. There have always been widespread allegations of data-tweaking to show ‘desirable’ results. The assessment of COVID19 impact is a similar scenario. A detailed research article was published internationally on 6th January 2021 by a group from Sustainable Development Study Center, Government College

COVID Vaccines in Pakistan – Blog Post #463 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #463. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Government started vaccination drive few weeks ago across Pakistan for people over 60 years of age. It is absolutely free. I also got my first dose of Chinese vaccine on 13th March. The letter reproduced below has been circulating widely since March 24. Allegedly, it is written by Transparency International.  Before you read the letter, I have the following comments. 1. It does not look genuine given the tone and contents 2. A small scan of the Vice Chairperson signature is affixed. Given its importance, it should have been signed in actual 3. It is beyond the scope of TI to address the Prime Mini

Environmental and Public Health Issues in Pakistan – Blog Post #462 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #462. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Environment and public health are closely linked because environment directly affects health of community, or public health. Environmental concerns in Pakistan are not raised often. It is not the kind of topic which may be seen consistently in public forums, be those related to industry, agriculture, or society at large. Public health also receives little attention usually. On February 24, 2021, an article by Umama Izbel and Rabial Urooj from Department of Environmental Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore was published in the Journal of Pollution Effects and Control. It is

Learnings from A Year of Pandemic – Blog Post #461 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #461. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. March 2020 was when COVID impact started in Pakistan. Prior to that, it was something we heard was happening in other countries. We did not consider that it would arrive here, but it did. Our response was as tentative as the rest of the world and it cannot be criticized. The whole world was fighting an unknown entity. The world is still clearly divided between developed and developing (read under-developed) countries, though we do not say that anymore. This divide has several implications which are primarily related to resources and facilities, which are again related to economic resources. The d

Adjusting Business Model to New Normal II – Blog Post #460 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #460. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Customer Expectations Have Changed Pharma customers have been pampered beyond reason for quite some time. In the interest of faster growth and greater market share, the top companies have increased their cost of selling seriously. Sponsorship cost of medical conferences has risen astronomically and is many times more than the actual cost incurred on the event. There are many other kinds of investments and sponsorships which remain on offer and in practice. When COVID lockdown struck, all running investments went bad. No one could ask for ‘Return on Investment’ be

Adjusting Business Model to New Normal I – Blog Post #459 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #459. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Most of us are coming round to the idea that the past will not return, ever. Whatever we have is what is being termed as ‘New Normal’. If this is so, then we should better get used to it and adjusted to it as soon as possible. In a way it makes sense. We had hope against hope for a year and a half since COVID19 started. We tried lockdown, we tried many other things which came to mind, but nothing has worked as effectively as we wanted it to be. More literature is coming out now which suggests that COVID will stay with us like many other diseases, such a typhoid, malaria, flu and so on. Peo

Getting COVID Vaccine – Blog Post #458 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #458. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. COVID third wave is apparently here. New lockdown instructions have been issued by the government. The people are still ambivalent about lockdown. ‘To do or not to do’ is the present theme. Businesses have their own compulsions of losing business once again, while general public is unwilling to lose their freedom again. Let us see how this lockdown works. COVID Vaccines are still a hot topic though it has lost some of its steam. EU is battling with delayed supplies and India is offering to supply to the whole world. US stands aloof with its quota of vaccine guaranteed.  Pfizer-Biontech was the first to get a

Digital Communication Challenges III – Blog Post #457 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #457. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Before the emails and WhatsApp messages rob us of our sanity, we urgently need to consider the following steps. WhatsApp Forwards Should be Stopped Please do not forward any message even if it says you will burn in hell if you do not send it to ten people. Hold your ground. Do not let WhatsApp take control of your life. Only messages with a public safety alert may be shared; all others should preferably be discarded and deleted right after seeing. WhatsApp messages are an invasion of privacy. No one has the right to keep sending unwanted bulk of messages, no matter ho

Digital Communication Challenges II – Blog Post #456 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #456. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Challenge #3 – English Language People of the former English colonies have inherent complex about English language. True, that the English ruled us for over two hundred years and our ‘freedom period’ is only about seventy years. Does this mean that we have to wait for another hundred years to get complex-free? Not really. The way things are going, we are becoming more complexed and more English-oriented with every passing day. I have seen similar phenomenon in former French colonies. English language in Pakistan is a recipe for success for some and a matter of heartbre

Digital Communication Challenges I – Blog Post #455 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #455. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. It is not just about Work from Home, or working across continents, or working from one city to another, or even working from one location to another within the same city; the text communication has become the most frequent mode of communication. The inboxes of everyone who is anyone is flooded with emails, most of which are copies and are of no consequence. The other common mode is text messages through WhatsApp. Both emails and WhatsApp messages cost nothing apparently and are therefore used to the hilt. Short text messages are less popular individually, but more popular commercially. The digit

Healthcare Spending II – Blog Post #454 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #454. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… The concept of buying health insurance privately is virtually non-existent in Pakistan.  Our people are quite familiar with life insurance, and it has been around for ages, but very few people actually get insured. Medical facility is provided to employees of government and semi-government institutions by their parent institutions. The scope of coverage and benefits varies between departments and with the grade. Some corporations offer full medical coverage to entire family even after the person has retired. Others may be less generous and may cover immediate family only.  Labor wo

Healthcare Spending – Blog Post #453 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #453. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Healthcare spending is a composite of spending on doctors’ consultations, diagnostic procedures, medicines and hospitalization expenses (if needed). No data is collected for spending of consultation and diagnostics, although it has become quite a big expense. In fact, for a regular patient, this expense may be many times more than the cost of medicines. The spending on medicines is recorded through monitoring the sales of Pharma companies. IQVIA is an international company which collects Pharma market data, compiles it, publishes it, and sells it at cost. IQVIA recently published market statistics for Q4, 2020