If you’ve been keeping up with the Ministry of Health’s daily updates, you would know that our well-respected Health Director General, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, has been Malaysia’s hero in the middle of this Covid-19 storm, doing his best as the medium between the public and the Ministry of Health.
But just as we thought Dr Noor Hisham could do no more, the national figure continues to surprise us. Recently, the Health DG took to his Facebook to announce that he joined a coalition of global scientists to combat the viral pandemic in resource-poor environments.
According to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), Dr Noor Hisham is one of the 74 signatories of the Covid-19 Clinical Research Coalition which seeks to accelerate research in areas who desperately need it. But the movement isn’t just signed by medical professionals or scientists. In fact, the group actually comprises of physicians, funders and policymakers from over 70 institutions and 30 countries.
“We welcome the launch of this coalition, which takes advantage of existing multinational and multidisciplinary expertise in running clinical trials in resource-poor settings,” said WHO chief scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, who praised the coalition that would also help the UN in coordinating a global response to Covid-19, reports the Star.
All are dedicated towards finding solutions to tackle the viral outbreak in resource-poor settings where the virus poses an even greater threat to some weak health-care systems and vulnerable populations.
Following a journal published by the initiative, coalition members have reason to believe that international research collaboration was urgently needed to support African, Latin American, Eastern European and selective Asian countries to respond effectively according to trends of the worsening pandemic.
While these authors were committed to sharing as much of their technical expertise and clinical capabilities, they also acknowledged that only a few of the 600 Covid-19 clinical trials registered were well-planned and resourced despite the launch of WHO’s Solidarity trial.
In order to tackle this issue, the coalition’s members called for specific commitments so effective new treatments would be made readily available to these poorly-resourced settings as soon as possible.
“Although the epicentre is today elsewhere, we must prepare now for the consequences of this pandemic in more resource-constrained settings or we stand to lose many more lives,” stressed Dr Swaminathan.
Kudos to Dr Noor Hisham for going above and beyond to aid the local and global Covid-19 crisis! We are proud to have you as our Health DG.
Also read: Humble Health DG Refuses To Accept Title Of “National Hero”, Says It’s A Team Effort
