Pharma Veterans

Travel in Africa – Part 3 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #568 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #568. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. The second day of exhibition was almost as busy as the first day, though the number of serious inquirers was less. This is not unusual. The pattern is universal. If the exhibition is for three days, the most relevant people will come on the second day. If it is for two days, they will come mostly on the first day. Normally, they would take the first round and then decide who to pursue further, and they would return to specific stalls only. The exhibition closed at the end of the second day. Few comments on three topics are in order. Exhibitors – belong to two main categories: business o

Travel in Africa – Part 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #567 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #567. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. Our first day was consumed in preparing the exhibition stall. The spaces in the designated hall were still under work and were handed over late in the evening. My colleague was doing the hard work and finally it was almost done by midnight.  Tuesday plan was to attend the 2nd Pakistan Africa Trade Conference. Chief guest was the Governor of Lagos State. Several other government officials and dignitaries were also present. From Pakistan, Advisor to PM on Commerce & Trade Abdul Razzak Dawood was there along with High Commissioner of Pakistan in Nigeria and several other officials. Spee

Travel in Africa – Part 1 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #566 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #566. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. First, I would like to pay huge gratitude to all friends, well-wishers, and dear ones. I was in traveling and therefore could not publish the blogpost on Monday 22 November as per regular schedule. I posted a message a later about the missing post later during the day. I received so many messages of wishes and prayers, I just sat down and spent some time basking in the warmth of affection. I feel so much lucky to have such great friends and loved ones around and no amount of gratitude is adequate in response. Thank you all, thank you very much. I am so much enriched and blessed. May Alla

Patients’ Attendants – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #565 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #565. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. When we talk about healthcare systems, providers, professionals, paramedics, diagnostic technicians etc., our entire focus is on patients, and rightly so. What we do not talk about is that in all healthcare facilities in Pakistan, the patients are required to bring attendants with them to take care of them. Except for ICUs in selected hospitals, the healthcare facility requires the presence of at least one attendant who must stay in the ward with the patient. This is necessitated that none of our hospitals is designed to take care of the patients independently. It means they do not have enoug

Dengue Fever – Part 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #564 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #564. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. Pakistan is currently seeing a huge surge in dengue cases. The disease has been around since early 2000 and the incidence has increased over time. We saw large occurrences over the years.  Several research articles from Pakistan are available on the disease prevalence, incidence, severity, age distribution, effect of environmental factors and effect of changes in weather patterns. The summary of situation as follows. • Dengue is common in three provinces: Punjab, KPK, and Sindh. Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan appears to have a smaller incidence. • Several factors have contributed to th

Dengue Fever – Part 1 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #563 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #563. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. Dengue is raging in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world. We look at various aspects of this epidemic in these posts. It appears that in 2021, Pakistan is seeing a significant increase as compared to 2020. A French report by F. Rodhain published in 1996 and cited in [The situation of dengue in the world] - PubMed (nih.gov) summarized the dengue situation as follows. Do remember it was 25 years ago. [Quote] The situation of dengue in the world can be summarized as follows: 2.5 billion persons at risk, 60 millions cases per year, and 30 000 deaths per year. The four dengue serotypes, DEN-1, DEN

JIT Report PIC Deaths – Last Part – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #562 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #562. Pharma Veterans welcome 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…… Ten years ago, the tragic episode of several deaths due to contaminated drug –   ISOTAB – Batch J093 – manufactured by Efroze Chemical Industries, Karachi took place. A Judicial Inquiry Tribunal under a High Court Judge was commissioned to find out the causes of this great human loss. The JIT report is available on the WHO international website. The full report is spread on 297 pages and those interested may follow the link at the end to access the report.  PIC tragedy led to admission of hundreds of patients in various hospitals. PIC ran a campaign to a

JIT Report PIC Deaths – Part 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #561 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #561. Pharma Veterans welcome 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…… Ten years ago, the tragic episode of several deaths due to contaminated drug –   ISOTAB – Batch J093 – manufactured by Efroze Chemical Industries, Karachi took place. A Judicial Inquiry Tribunal under a High Court Judge was commissioned to find out the causes of this great human loss. The JIT report is available on the WHO international website. The full report is spread on 297 pages and those interested may follow the link at the end to access the report.  On 13.01.2012, a committee was constituted by the Secretary Health under the convenorship of Professo

JIT Report PIC Deaths – Part 1 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #560 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #560. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. Ten years ago, the tragic episode of several deaths due to contaminated drug –   ISOTAB – Batch J093 – manufactured by Efroze Laboratories Karachi took place. The bigger tragedy was that the alleged manufacturer did not pay any compensation to the victim’s families whose number was well over hundred. A Judicial Inquiry Tribunal under a High Court Judge was commissioned to find out the causes of this great human loss. The JIT report is available on the WHO international website. The full report is spread on 297 pages and those interested may follow the link at the end to access the r

A Test of Patience – Part 3 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #559 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #559. Pharma Veterans welcome 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…… Patience is not a virtue that everyone is born with. It is largely a learned wisdom. Passing through certain stages in life makes us learn patience. Becoming a parent is one such stage. Working in a hostile environment is another stage where patience is rapidly cultivated. Patience can therefore a learned and adopted. Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries in a JULY 2020 article, has described nine ways for enhancing patience. We can discuss some of these here, with modification. Understanding patience triggers is the first step. A patience trigger is an indication that o

A Test of Patience – Part 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #558 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #558. Pharma Veterans welcome 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…… Psychologists have described patience, types of patience and therapies for cultivating patience. We pick a little from there for understanding but stay away from hardcore psychology. A study by Sarah A. Schnitker, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology reports results of three studies, the first of which measures three types of patience on a new 3-factor Patience Scale. Interpersonal Patience – is the one we need when we deal with people, and which is what we do most commonly. People are our family, our friends, our colleagues, our bosses, our teams,

A Test of Patience – Part 1 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #557 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #557. Pharma Veterans welcome 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. Dorie Clarke, the founder of Recognizes Experts – RExers – a community of highly accomplished, wonderful people, has published a new book in September 2021. This is her fourth book, and it is titled ‘The Long Game – How to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world’. I highly recommend it. Long-term thinking is becoming a challenge because the focus has largely shifted to short-term thinking and actions. The book therefore is need of the time.    One major reason for losing sight of long-term thinking is that patience has become a scarce commodity and the lack of it has become a majo