Unani Medicine in The Contemporary World

KARACHI- The inaugural session of a 2-day symposium, based on the Challenges & Opportunities for Unani Medicine in the Contemporary World was recently held, under the president-ship of Sadia Rashid, Chancellor, Hamdard University at Bait al-Hikmah Auditorium, Madinat al-Hikmah, Karachi.

Speaking on the occasion, Chief Guest and President, National Council for Tibb (N.C.T), Prof. Dr. Zabta Khan Shinwari mentioned that, Tibb was a system of treatment quite older than allopathic medicine; and that allopathy should be treated as alternative medicine rather than Tibb-i-Unani. He also added that considering the interest in herbal medicines, the followers of Tibb-i-Unani should not remain stagnant and  move forward to improve the concept and efficacy of Tibb to introduce it to the world at a large scale.

Paying tribute to Hakim Saeed, Dr. Zabta praised his compassion and efforts towards establishing Tibb-i-Unani.

Altogether, including Mohtarma Sadia Rashid and  Managing Director and CEO of Hamdard Laboratories (Waqf) Usama Qureshi, will try their best to realize Late Hakim Saeed’s dream.

Addressing the students of Eastern Medicine, he said that they should improve their attendance and take active part in research work. He discussed about the advancing state of medicine and other innovations in the medical field. He emphasized on resorting towards consuming large amounts of vegetables, such as potatoes and tomatoes, as they contain many beneficial properties.

During his speech, Dr. Zabta urged the government to grant jobs to BEMS degree holders. “I can assure that the performance of a BEMS would not lesser than a MBBS”, he added.  Sadia

Madam Sadia Rashid, Chancellor, Hamdard University in her presidential address, mentioned that, the purpose of faculty of Eastern Medicine was to produce such physicians who could understand the modern research in medicines whilst doing herbal medicine and incorporating modern changes to it. “In the absence of government’s patronage, the progress of alternative medicine lags behind in Pakistan”, she lamented and added that the fundamental purpose of orientation of BEMS Degree Course in Faculty of Eastern Medicine, Hamdard University was to fill this gap and promote the image and education of Tibb-i-Unani.

Usama Qureshi, Managing Director and CEO, Hamdard Laboratories (Waqf) Pakistan, thanked Prof Dr. Zabta Khan. He added that he sees a bright future for Unani Medicine, as they have developed a plan to establish 100 Hamdard Matabs, equipped with modern facilities of tests and diagnosis.

Syed Shabibul Hasan, Vice Chancellor, Hamdard University stated that, Tibb-i-Unani needed more research to come at par with allopathy and in order to achieve this purpose, everyone should work together with other manufacturers of Unani Medicine.

Prof. Dr. Ghazala Hafeez Rizwani further added that, Unani Medicine was crossing its old boundaries and spreading across the world. Integration of this health system in public healthcare plan is necessary to help it flourish.

Prof. Dr. Mansoor Ahmed, Vice Chancellor, Metropolitan University, Karachi while emphasizing on research in Eastern Medicine, gave hints and guidance to the students of Eastern Medicine, regarding research methodologies and publishing. He also stressed upon standardization of herbal medicines.

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Qaiser, Ex-Vice Chancellor, University of Karachi, expressed that Pakistan should try to preserve and utilize the 6,000 medicinal plants available in the country. Chinese were trying to take benefits from its 50,000 plants, that were being cultivated in China.. A big conference on ‘Medicinal Plants’ should be held,  in collaboration with all the manufacturers of herbal medicines, he suggested.