With the objective of providing better trained human resources to pharma industry for developing herbal drugs, Pune University plans to start a two year M.Sc. course in herbal drug technology.
Talking to this correspondent Dr. Bhushan Patwardhan, Director, School of Health Sciences, Pune University, opined, "There is a dearth of expert human resource in India in the field of herbal drug technology and development. There is a drastic need to churn out trained human resource to accelerate the growth of herbal drug market domestically and globally, too."
Explaining further he said that the course would be design in a way so as to expose students to all aspects of herbal drug development and technology. "We would try to develop a globally competitive human resource that would suit industry needs," pointed out Dr. Patwardhan.
The course would also focus on biotechnology component focusing on plant tissue culture that would be used for developing herbal drugs and DNA finger printing would also be included in the course that would be used to identify specific plant components for developing a specific drug.
The course would take off by next year with 10-15 students. According to him there is a great scope of employment for the students as most of the industry are surging ahead at a faster pace to tap the Indian and global herbal drug market. "We have received many inquiries from the industry people who want expert and well trained human resource," he said.
However, he lamented that India, which has an ancient history of Ayurveda medicines, is fast losing to China. Presently China is the global leader having the largest global market share. "The overall global market is pegged at $ 60 billion out of which India has a market share of only $100 million and China is far ahead with its market share crossing $ five billion mark," he noted.
Dr. Patwardhan also expressed the hope of starting a management course (MBA, Health) in health. "Given the fact that most of the hospitals in India lags behind in incorporating better management system, we thought of starting a management course in health. But it is still in the pipeline and it would be too soon to reveal any details on that," said Dr. Patwardhan.