Banishing Illnesses: New research centre to help battle a host of diseases to be opened at DUHS

The aim of the facility will be to help policymakers make better decisions.

KARACHI:

Concerned by the high incidence of disease in Pakistan, researchers in the field of medicine are taking steps to help policymakers make smarter choices.

At a press conference on Friday, the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) announced plans to open a research centre at the National Institute of Diabetes and Endocrinology (NIDE). The Diabetic Association of Pakistan (DAP) will collaborate in the project.

“Researchers, doctors, clinicians and physicians need to do their work - which is to collect credible data and then make it available - so that policymakers can do theirs,” said the secretary general of the DAP, Dr Abdus Samad Shera. The centre will collect data on non-communicable and metabolic diseases. The research at the centre will focus on diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and obesity.

It is scheduled to open within a year and will be headed by the director of NIDE, Prof. Zaman Shaikh. “The need for a centre was always there, but something concrete began to materialise during the second international diabetes conference organised by DUHS,” said the vice chancellor of the institution, Prof. Masood Hameed Khan. He added that the idea was discussed during a recent meeting which was attended by Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan and foreign delegates who participated in the conference. “The governor agreed that there is a need for reliable and representative data so that better policies regarding public health can be made,” said Khan.

Shera called diabetes ‘the mother of all diseases’ and said that the philosophy behind focusing on preventative measures was to control, if not eliminate, the dangerous complications that this condition can lead to. “One of the most common reasons behind blindness and heart disease is diabetes,” he said. Shera added that a positive change will obviously not occur overnight, but the centre would certainly galvanise efforts to eradicate diabetes. “Even a superpower such as the United States can‘t bear the costs of treatment of this medical condition.”

He stressed that early diagnosis of the condition, especially type II diabetes, could help evade complications. “People who are over 25 years old, overweight, have family members with the condition and born in Asia are at risk. If someone meets even two of these criteria, then that person should get tested.” The age at which people commonly develop diabetes has declined to 35 years in Pakistan compared to over 50 years abroad.

Dr Khan said that there should be no shortage of epidemiologists at the centre as the masters programme in biostatistics epidemiology at DUHS has some capable candidates. But specialist diabetic nurses may be short in supply. Shera and Khan said this matter would be addressed soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2011.