Pharma Veterans

Mental Health Challenges of Public Protests – The Case of Bangladesh – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1009 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1009 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Photos Taken from Various Sources This post has been inspired by an article by Md Omar Faruk from Bangladesh, published in The Lancet, October 2024 issue just published. Link at the end. Other references also mentioned. Preamble Public protests are a part of daily life in Pakistan. People come out on the streets due to dissatisfaction, anger, disagreement, and to voice their position on key issues. Some public protests are staged by parties to get into/stay in the news; some are staged to get some material benefit from the government. Public protests organized by the public against injustice are relatively uncommon in Pakist...

Credit: Christina Morillo Credit: Lombe K Credit: Mikhail Nilov Credit: Timur Weber Credit: Vitaly Gariev Credit: Yan Krukau Multiple Generations at Work – Strategies – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1008 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1008 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. We have seen how the generations have been classified and what challenges come up in the workplaces. In this last part, we shall look at strategies to mitigate risks and take advantage of the presence of multiple generations. Deploy Tailored Management Strategies The foremost strategy is to tailor management strategies, not once but on a continuing basis.     For example, different generations have varying preferences for feedback. The strategy should be to design feedback strategies that include both real-time, in...

Multiple Generations at Work – Implications – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1007 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1007 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Kampus Production Credit: Karolina Kaboompics Credit: Markus Spiske The fact is that multiple generations are working simultaneously in almost all workplaces. As discussed in the last blog post, there are major differences in the orientation, value system, and workplace ethic across generations. This leads to several implications including but not limited to, the impact on communication, boss-subordinate relationship, and workplace culture. Implications of Multiple Generations Working Together Diverse Skill Sets and Perspectives The mix of generations brings diverse perspectives, leading to greater creativity and innovation. Older generation...

Generations at Work - Overview – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1006 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1006 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Aa Dil Credit: Alena Darmel Credit: Alex Green Credit: Askar Abayev Thirty/ Forty years ago, people in Pakistan were also talking about ‘generation gap’. Newspaper articles, TV programs, and even TV plays talked about how the older and newer generations were not able to understand one another. There were no real explanations except that the times had changed. Several years later, the anthropologists and social scientists came up with the concept of generations.  In this short 3-part series, we shall try to understand the basis of classification of generations, their unique characteristics, the implications of multiple generations at the same workplac...

Ethical Issues in Pharmaceutical Marketing – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1005 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1005 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Anna Shvets Credit: Eva Bronzini Pharmaceutical Marketing is a different type of marketing because the customer is not consumer. In all other commodities, such as food, appliances, textiles, shoes etc., customer and consumer are the same person, unless someone buys for someone else as a gift which is a fraction of total business. In Pharma marketing, customer is doctor and consumer is patient. Pharma companies are not allowed by law to approach patients directly for selling medicines. Nutritional supplements such as vitamins, health foods, probiotics, energy boosters etc., are not supposed to treat any disease and are therefore allowed to adv...

Longevity – Other Aspects – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1004 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1004 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Ali Pazani Credit: Boom Credit: Mikhail Nilov Long Life or Longevity is a complicated matter and raises several ethical, social, economic, and global issues. This post highlights some of these aspects. Equity and Access The potential for longevity technologies to be accessible primarily to the wealthy, as is the case at present, raises significant concerns about justice and inequality. If only affluent individuals can afford life-extending treatments, this could exacerbate existing health disparities and create a societal divide where longevity becomes a privilege rather than a universal right. Religious Beliefs Most religions endorse a fixed lifespan allocat...

Long Live Every One !! – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1003 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1003 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Artem Podrez Credit: Darina Belonogova Credit: Ron Lach Credit: Tamhasip Khan The quest for living longer has been around for a ‘long’ time, if not from the beginning. Fear of death or love of life are mixed up in this sentiment. Many years ago, there was a novel by the infamous Harold Robins, in which the lead character, a wealthy person, is pursuing to live long. He had hired a team of doctors who were trying to bring down his normal body temperature to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with the claim that it will make him live to 125 years.  Longevity Market Presently, emerging technologies are making it possible to aim for longevity. A market for longevity technolog...

Absenteeism in Workplace – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1002 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1002 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Felipe Silva Credit: Ivan Samkov Credit: José Martin Segura Benites Credit: Mark Stebinick Absenteeism among office and factory workers is a significant challenge across Asia, affecting productivity and business outcomes.  Factors for Absenteeism It feels quite disturbing when an office staff suddenly sends in sick leave or casual leave. Sick leaves are mostly unjustified because today the guy is healthy and well all day, next day he reports sick, and the day next to that returns to office healthy and well again. This sickness cannot be explained, because if the sickness was serious, it would not go away in one day without leaving any mark; if it was so sm...

Spiritual Health, Life, and Work – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1001 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1001 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Prince Kumar Credit: Firshad Muhammad Credit: Milo Deckert This blogpost partakes liberally from an article published in May 2024 by McKinsey based on its own survey. Link at the end. Preamble Workplace are supposed to be secular. Work is the religion that everyone subscribes to. Occasionally, in countries like Pakistan, people tend to discuss too many things in offices either because they have a lot of time to kill, or they just want to keep chattering. Religion, or rather religious elements keep coming under discussion. The topic of this post is spiritual health, not any religion. Spiritual health may be defined as having meaning in one’s life, a sen...