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.
The situation of our medical community and Pharma industry is very clearly depicted in this piece of writing. Such voices should reach the governing bodies and people should be sensitized not to gain these personal benefits. The money used for these events can be easily channelized towards patient’s welfare
This also applies to spendings incurred by UN Agencies like WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF etc. They spend billions worth on payments of five star hotels. Such huge money can be more judiciously used and mobilized on some productive work.
It is high time to curtail this un-necessary activity: Not a single worth while research, trial or local guidelines are presented: The old baba have stereotyped presentation. Nothing new, all this can be read in the net and updates. The foreign sponsorships should also be monitored. But it should be by the honest, God fearing and ethic followers senior doctors- A far cry. If we hand over the monitoring to the corrupt establishment, there ll be further deterioration. Therefore, the doctors body should look into it themselves
Eye opening article. We all should be conscientious enough to look into such practices. May Allah give us true insight regarding these matters.
Indeed a pathetic & malignant state of affairs
Very sad state of affairs …it needs to be taken care of ..proper planning should be done for year 2025 so that we dont waste such an amount on conferences in future ..hope govt forms some strategy.We call our country third world and struggling through economic crisis…how are we going to flourish by conferences…?
Yes these gatherings are mostly now became a social events
Thanks for highlighting the issue! A spree to mint money by greedy so called professionals. Situation demands an audit and accountability of funds collected by the organisers over the years. Now situation is even bleak personal accounts are used to collect money.
Very important, needs attention of the sincere doctors, pharmaceutical companies and Govt. Health Care authorities. Many of us will never be involved in such unethical activities which ultimately cause burden on the poor patients. We should not remain silent in this issue which is a dark stigma on the medical professionals.
Over and above recreational trips to hundreds of drs by the name of med con, in countries like Switzerland, Belgium, UK, Spain, etc further adds to the situation, I was personally shocked when I saw an average qualification dr going to Bankkok twice in one month, similarly tukey Baku, South Africa are other destinations,Locally Bhurban Naran, etc hotels and pcs are filled with these types of things, This results in lowering the cure quality,of medical profession, and research based treatment solutions and high cost.
In the name of humanity I request the superiors to completely ban sponsored tours of medical professionals, ( specially of govt institutions ) and divert these expenses to lowering the prices of medicines for the already powerty strikeni people
Facts and figures presented are alarming, although dissemination of knowledge is claimed to be for better patient care yet there must a monitoring and evaluation mechanism.
Eye opening article these gatherings are social rather than research . they only please the doctors so as to sell their drugs medical profession is now commercialism not for the betterment of society. Foreign tours’.; umrahs.marriage ceremonies are arranged by pharmaceuticals.
That an open corruption going on and big names involved they gather huge whooping amount of money like ten or fifty million rupees and get these one or two three days conference and remaining money is being distributed in the big Professors and they don’t even want to keep the record of money of you ask them they say these society accounts are problematic and that’s a secret between senior professors most of these societies are not registered as society and they are just registered as companies like offshore companies and accounts funds are being transferred to I don’t know may be to terror organisation because no record no audit I being released.
I request reporter to please share the data. As per his calculations 36.5 crores or 365 million per conference. But even a 3 day international conference at a good venue with workshops can be arranged in just 30 millions. So I request reporter to review data may be he has added one more zero mistakenly which make an increase of expenses by 10 times
Who is bearing the burnt of these 11.7 billion Rs. Most of it is borne by public in the form of cost of medicines. The other victim are healthcare professionals who are paying registration fee.
Who are the beneficiaries?
Prof. Dr. Rafiq Khanani
The Pakistan Society of Echocardiography is holding it’s annual meeting in the first week of Jan 2025. I am organising it in AFIC. No delegate/ Speaker is staying in 5 star hotel. All in nearby messes. Only working lunch boxes are being provided. I have asked all the presenters to start with original case studies and then discuss. Registration fee is nominal. The whole conference is being organised as a course. There are foreign speakers on Zoom.
We need to get away from free lunches, bags and shields. So much time is wasted on the distribution of shields. It is unnecessary. Meetings start late and speakers don’t stick to time. Conferences abroad are full of scientific materials. They start on the dot. No wastage is seen. Now, no takeaways at stalls. At best just tea, coffee or ice cream.
Such conferences should be combined under one body and should be held in medical colleges or expo cetres located in Karachi,Lahore and Islamabad agree every speciality should be allocated dedicated tine to present the research papers.only working lunch should be part of the even and no dinners .
Agreed with Author ! Trend should be changed and conferences should be held in institution with use of minimal resources! They should have more scientific element rather than social get together along with Gala dinner ! Thought provoking article.
An eye opener indeed.
These events are being organized in institutions as well, but the core issue remains unchanged: the funds often end up directly in the pockets of institutional heads and faculty members. This is particularly problematic in public sector institutions, where such financial transactions are less transparent, making it harder to gauge or detect the corruption. While events held in hotels make these practices somewhat noticeable, within institutions, they often go unnoticed. Especially the resources of the public sector institutions are being utilized
that are tax payers money but institutional head and head of departments are getting monetary benefits.
Doctors are still charged hefty fees, and pharmaceutical companies are required to pay for stalls—funds that are funneled to both the administration and faculty. The real issue lies not in the choice of venue but in uncovering the corruption of those involved. A closer investigation into major public sector hospitals would reveal the extent of the corruption orchestrated by institutional heads and department leaders. The network runs much deeper than it appears on the surface.
None of the so-called scientific societies have any policy of dedicating a certain amount of their revenue on locally relevant clinical research. None or very few of them has a research grant committee.
The societies more often than not coerce pharma companies to participate, and punish non-participants with either stopping prescriptions of their products or some other measures. It’s a very sad situation. Patients get absolutely zero benefit from such gatherings, while the society core committee pockets millions of rupees.
Further, there is virtually zero oversight of the society’s activities.