‘Alternative medicine lagging behind in Pakistan’

Speakers stress need to increase research, awareness on Unani medicine in the country

 

The inaugural session of a two-day symposium on ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Unani Medicine in the Contemporary World’ was held on Monday at the Bait alHikmah Auditorium, Madinat alHikmah, Karachi

The event was presided over by Hamdard University Chancellor Sadia Rashid. Speaking on the occasion, chief guest and National Council for Tibb (NCT) President Prof Dr Zabta Khan Shinwari said that Tibb was a system of medicine older than the allopathic system of medicine so allopathy should be treated as alternative medicine, not Tibb-i-Unani.

At a time when the whole world is looking towards natural herbal medicines, we, the followers of Tibb-i-Unani, the founder of herbal medicine, are stagnant and not moving forward to improve the Tibb to introduce it on a global level, however, we still have time and if we work together we could achieve our goals, he added.

Paying tribute to Hakim Said, Dr Shinwari said what he had done for the progress of Tibb-i-Unani cannot be replicated. “However, we, including Sadia Rashid and the young managing director and CEO of Hamdard Laboratories, Usama Qureshi, will try our level best to realise his dream,” he vowed.



Addressing the students of Eastern medicine, Dr Shinwari said they should improve their research work and attendance, as he had come to know that their classes were poorly attended, which is not good as we are being challenged by people with great resources and power.

“They are trying to introduce things such as robots that will replace soldiers and fatal diseases will be destroyed in human bodies before causing damage, removing the need for medicine. By eating potatoes and tomatoes we will be all right as these vegetables work as medicines too,” he explained. The idea of this invention was taken from meat eating animals that ate vegetables when they got sick, he claimed.

Dr Shinwari said that he urged the government that if it gave 10 jobs to MBBS doctors, at least one should be given to a bachelors of Eastern medical sciences (BEMS) degree holder. “I can assure you that the performance of a BEMS graduate would not be less than a MBBS,” he arrested.

Rashid said that the purpose of the faculty of Eastern medicine was to produce physicians of Eastern medicine who could understand modern research in medicine and recreate the same in herbal medicine.

“In the absence of the government's patronage, the progress of alternative medicine lags behind in Pakistan,” she lamented, adding that the fundamental purpose of the BEMS degree at the faculty of Eastern medicine at Hamdard University was to fill this gap and promote the image and education of Tibb-i-Unani.

Qureshi said that Dr Shinwari had been a well-wisher of Tibb-i-Unani and with his help they should take this old and effective system of treatment further. “Your future is bright as you will get more chances and opportunities to progress and develop yourselves in the field of Eastern medicine as we have made a plan to establish 100 Hamdard matabs [clinics], equipped with modern facilities of diagnosis and tests and the network of the matabs will be expanded to the whole country,” he said. Qureshi added that they would like to take Unani medicine to the heights of glory that Said wanted it to reach.



Syed Shabibul Hasan, vice-chancellor of Hamdard University, said Tibb-i-Unani needed more research to be on a par with allopathy and to achieve this we should work together with other manufacturers of Unani medicine.

Prof Dr Ghazala Hafeez Rizwani said Unani medicine was crossing its old boundaries and spreading across the world and without integrating this system of health in public healthcare, the problem of health would not be resolved.

Prof Dr Mansoor Ahmed, vice-chancellor of Metropolitan University, while emphasing on the need for research in Eastern medicine, gave hints and guidance to the students on how to research, write research papers and get them published, because without using proper methods they would not be successful. He also emphasised the standardisation of herbal medicine.

Prof Dr Muhammad Qaiser, ex-vice chancellor of the University of Karachi, was of the view that taking into account the huge popularity of herbal medicine, Pakistan should try to preserve and utilise the 6,000 medicinal plants available in the country. The Chinese were trying to take benefits from its 50,000 plants that are being cultivated in China. A large scale conference on medicinal plants should be held here with the collaboration of all manufacturers of herbal medicines, he suggested.