Pakistan spends 11 Billion 70 Crore on 32 medical conferences in 2024

Shaukat Ali Jawaid

According to reports an amount of Eleven Billion and seventy crore rupees have been spent on organizing thirty two medical conferences in the country this year till November 2024. The conscious and saner healthcare professionals must ponder over it, does it really justify in a poor country like Pakistan which is surviving on loans and financial assistance from friendly countries.

Unfortunately now more than one professional society or organization has emerged in every discipline and each one of them are eager to hold their conferences annually. One may ask do they have any worthwhile research to present at these conferences of which many are just social get together with very little scientific contents.

The Stalls in the Pharma exhibition on the eve of such conferences which used to cost ten to twenty thousand rupees few years ago are now billed at twenty to fifty lac rupees. Registration fee of delegates which used to be five hundred to one thousand has also been increased starting from five thousand to twenty thousand rupees., All this is done in fact to collect money since it is paid by the pharmaceutical trade and industry, none of the healthcare professionals pays it from their own pocket.

These conferences organized at Five Star hotels are attended by many “Stalwarts” who can be seen sitting at pharma company stalls negotiating for their sponsorship of next trip overseas and “Outstanding” delegates, those who are seen standing in the corridors busy in social networking. None from these two categories are interested in scientific programme with the result that the attendance in scientific sessions is most often very disappointing while it increases manifold at the time of lunch or dinner. Little do these delegates realize that their each lunch and dinner at these five star hotels deprive many patients of their medications.

Time has come to look at these things seriously because the pharma industry passes it on this burden to the poor patients who find the investigations, drugs and healthcare beyond their reach. Often the non-compliance with drug therapy is because of the high cost of drugs which the patients cannot afford. It has often been suggested that the professional societies should only hold their conferences after two years instead of organizing these social get together annually. Secondly why should we have so many conferences every year? Why the senior leadership of the medical profession cannot agree to have five to six major conferences every year where each discipline can have their conference for a day or two which will save enormous amount of money which is wasted.

Ideally most of the conferences, academic activities should be organized in medical institutions and if holding it in a hotel is essential due to some security concerns when some foreign delegates are attending, the organizers should try to minimize the expenditures as far as possible. Doing away with free lunches, dinners, conference bags, shields, give away could form the starting point for such a change. Let us hope some conscious people in the medical profession will stand up and take the lead. Platinum, Gold and Silver sponsorships are criminal activities which should be condemned. Financial assistance from the pharma industry should be used to undertake research, offer scholarships to the postgraduates, expanding and renovating healthcare facilities particularly in the public sector.

Pharma trade and industry sponsors such academic activities by the medical profession all over the world but their they have some monitoring and accountability. However, in Pakistan since there is no check on unethical activities and practices, the situation has gone from bad to worse. The authorities must wake up and take some remedial measures.