News Update Times

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Getz Pharma Pvt. Ltd.,in partnership with Tabba Heart Institute, announced the launch of Pakistan Study of Premature Coronary Atherosclerosis in Young Adults (PAK- SEHAT) Cardiovascular diseases continue to have a significant impact across the world among different populations. To address the issue of the rising health burden of ASCVD in Pakistan, Getz Pharma Pvt. Ltd and Tabba Heart Institute (THI) formally launched PAK-SEHAT- Pakistan Study of Premature Coronary Atherosclerosis in Young Adults, a nationwide study conducted through Pakistan’s first state of art mobile lab. PAK SEHAT project is the largest, first-of-its-kind, longitudinal cohort study on Atherosclerotic Risk Assessment in Pakistani Population.

This 10-year joint venture of Getz Pharma &THI (PAK SEHAT) will help determine risk factors for coronary heart disease so that early detection can be done and disease can be prevented rather than treated. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, causing approximately 32% of annual deaths. The risk of cholesterol-associated CVD varies among different ethnicities; however, the risk is four fold in the South Asian (SA) Population compared to other races. Furthermore, almost 75% of all CVD deaths are in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), where there are finite health resources and a multitude of health-seeking barriers. The state of heart diseases in Pakistan also reflects a concerning picture.

According to the World Health Organization data published in 2018, coronary heart disease deaths in Pakistan reached 20% of total deaths, and Pakistan ranks 18 in cardiac mortality in the global ranking. Moreover, the numbers of potential CVD risk factors, including hypertension and diabetes, are also alarming in Pakistan, with 50% hypertension and 17.1% diabetes in the adult population. There is a drastic shift in CVD occurrence in young ages in the SA population, as evidenced by the groundbreaking INTERHEART study suggesting 10.6% of SA participants presented with a heart attack at <40 years of age. Therefore, this study primarily envisions screening the Pakistani individuals at a younger age to prevent increasing CVD burden in the future. This study aims to recruit healthy volunteers <40 years of age, from selected urban and rural areas of Pakistan, who are asymptomatic and have no cardiovascular disease.

This would allow for assessing the participants’ risk factor profiles and follow them up for at least five years to document the incidence of ASCVD. The objectives of PAK SEHAT includes: 1. To characterize the prevalence and severity of subclinical coronary atherosclerosis among young Pakistani men and women free of clinical CVD 2. To understand the impact, in terms of 5-year rates of cardiovascular events, by using the prognostic information provided by cardiac CTA and the other study tests and measurements to optimize cardiovascular prevention management in young Pakistanis. While Pakistan is the second-most populous country in South Asia, most of the data on the prevalence of ASCVD from South Asian regions is derived from India. As a result, the Pakistani Population is highly underrepresented in global research, as there is currently no comprehensive database on the native Pakistani Population to assess the likelihood of developing ASCVD.

Due to this high burden of disease, there is an urgent need for primary prevention and early screening for ASCVD in Pakistan. The findings from a study of this scale can provide groundbreaking results. It would help in informing future health policy targeting the native Pakistani Population, and it would allow early interventions for patients with risk of ASCVD from a younger age. Getz Pharma and Tabba Heart Institute are proud to lead an initiative of this scale with the aim to contribute to the growing research database in Pakistan and promote early screening and prevention for cardiovascular diseases in the country.

Karachi (Muhammad Yasir) The Prime Minister should immediately act to bring down the medicine prices in the country to ensure their availability to underprivileged people who have been facing acute problems in getting access to quality health care services. This was one of the consensus demand by the speakers who addressed the 4th Pakistan Healthcare Summit-2021 organised by Consumers’ Association of Pakistan (CAP) here at a hotel. The speakers demanded the government to immediately intervene to curtail the prices of life-saving drugs in the country so that they could be purchased by the patients belonging to middle and lower income groups. They said the medicine prices should be slashed keeping in view skyrocketing inflation in the country owing to which, people had a hard time finding quality health care services.

They demanded strict enforcement of the recently issued code of ethics of Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) to regulate relations between the pharmaceutical companies and doctors so not to incentivize the practice of prescribing medicines to the patients. They said the drug manufacturers should be taken to task by the government in accordance with the newly notified rules of the DRAP for offering undue favours to the doctors for prescribing to their patients the medicines produced by these companies. They urged the medical practitioners to fully adhere to the general code of ethics of their profession to make sure that every ailing citizen in the country got access to the best health treatment services in an honourable way.

The speakers, most of whom were associated with the health profession, also demanded the government to readily issue health insurance cards in Sindh to treat underprivileged patients who had no other means to get access to quality health care services. They said the destitute people in Sindh should get the facility of health insurance cards as was the case of people in Punjab and Khybe Pakthunkhwa. Speaking as the chief guest on the occasion, Chairman of Higher Education Commission Sindh, Dr Asim Hussain, said that government should give more attention to different fields of health care services. He said it was unfortunate that health and medical services had remained neglected fields in Pakistan. He said that getting best health care services was the fundamental right of every citizen, which should be fulfilled. He praised the effort on the part of the organisers of the conference to raise awareness about health care issues.

Dr Hussain, who also earlier served as an Advisor to PM, said the industries had to suffer much due to coronavirus health emergency. He also euologised the nationwide efforts to tackle the issue of coronavirus. He appreciated the services of health care professionals and workers who valiantly fought against the spread of coronavirus. The CAP Chairman Kaukab Iqbal said on the occasion that their association had been striving hard to protect the rights of consumers. He said the consumer protection act had been passed in all the four provinces of the country. He said that consumer protection departments had been constituted in different institutions. He said that they had been striving hard to ensure availability of the life-saving drugs in the country as he also acknowledged the role of Dr Asim Hussain in this regard.

Others speakers at the conference included Consul General of Malaysia Khairun Nazran Abdur-Rehman,CEO Dr. Minhaj A. Qidwai, former CEO Sindh Health Care Commission, Brig (retd) Azhar Manzoor Group Head Corporate Affairs Dr. Zia Uddin Hospital, University, Brig (retd) Malik Waqar Awan C.E.O Memon Medical Institute Hospitals, Brig (retd) Tariq Bungush , Medical Specialist, & Consultant APNA DIYLISIS KOHAT, Mr. Johar Minhal Regional Manager Malaysian Palm Oil Board, Salim Khan, DGM Exide Pakistan. Shahzeeb Sheikh Deputy Directr Sindh Food Authority , Former MNA Rehan Hashmi, Molana Azad Jamil.