The pharma education in Gujarat is growing at a scorching pace. While the undergraduate courses are facing a glut situation where the availability of seats are far outnumbering demand, a similar situation may soon happen for post graduate courses also. This will enable the industry and the academia to meet the manpower needs of the state, which is considered as one of the fast growing hub for pharma and allied industries in the country,according to experts.
Owing to the mushrooming of pharmacy colleges across the state, a large number of seats for pharmacy undergraduate courses are even said to be lying vacant. However the dearth of seats for higher level courses seems to continue for the time being, it is learnt.
Almost 3000 seats for undergraduate training programmes for pharmacy are lying vacant, out of the total 8000 seats for B Pharm in the state, according to experts in pharmacy education in the state. The state currently has around 100 pharmacy colleges offering B Pharm courses, out of which 15 came into existence in last one year.
There was a spurt in number of pharmacy colleges in the past five years, and now, it has come to a stage where there are not enough takers for the undergraduate courses. However, the higher level courses like M Pharm, which are the essential qualification for students to work with the pharma industry and as teachers, still has lesser seats.
The educational institutions in the state has around 600 to 800 seats dedicated for M Pharm students, which at present is less than the requirement. Similar is the case for PhD courses . At present the lack of required number of seats in these courses affect the availability of qualified candidates to teach in the burgeoning undergraduate institutions – of which majority consists of the self financing institutions. It is estimated that there are around 25 to 30 seats for PhD in Gujarat for every year.
“The seats for undergraduate courses are saturated now and if the trend continues , we will soon find more seats for M Pharm courses in the state which may also reach saturation,” said Dr Harish Padh, vice-chancellor, Sardar Patel University, Gujarat, who was the director with the B V Patel PERD Centre till recently.
The self finance colleges sprouted in the past five years may find it difficult to fill the seats in the undergraduate level in near future. However, some of the colleges which were established almost five years back can now introduce M Pharm courses. As per the current norms, an educational institution with more than five years of operational experience can start post graduate courses.
Earlier students used to migrate to the neighbouring states like Maharashtra once education is completed. However, just like in Gujarat, now many of these states have also experienced an increase in the number of pharmacy colleges in the recent past, thus putting a brake on the outflow of the students from Gujarat. This has also added to the manpower availability in the state.
Rather than adding up more seats,the educational institutions has to give a thrust on quality of education for survival said Dr Padh. The institutes like NIPER could survive the challenge because of its strong backing from the government, but the self finance colleges has to be more cautious of their future plans considering the trend, he added.
According to some reports NIPER is planning to set up a Rs 300 crore state-of-the-art project in Ahmedabad. At present, NIPER has only one fully functional campus, at Mohali in Punjab. Considering the stupendous growth of the pharmaceutical and allied fields, and the requirement for skilled manpower, the Union government has sanctioned six more such facilities -- in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam.
"The upcoming campus in Gandhinagar will be commissioned by the end of this calendar year. Construction work to develop 60 acres of land, provided by the state government at a concessional rate, has already been awarded to Faridabad-based company National Projects Construction Corporation Limited (NPCCL)," said a spokesperson of Ahmedabad NIPER.
The courses had commenced in 2007 at PERD premises in Ahmedabad. Currently, 70 students are studying in six different post-graduation courses, he said, adding that once the campus is commissioned, nearly 350 students would be accommodated in 12 courses. The institution is also expected to play a big role in providing skilled manpower to the fast growing medical devices industry in the state, by starting a specially designed course for medical devices segment.
Apart from classrooms equipped with audio-visual facilities and laboratories for different courses, a central testing laboratory and animal house have been envisaged for research activities. The sprawling campus will have a sports complex and landscaping garden.
Hostel facilities for boys and girls and staff quarters would also come up. "It is a research based education institute. Research activities to develop drugs to tackle diseases like Tuberculosis, night blindness and Malaria have been kicked-off. The idea is to tone up the level of pharmaceutical education and research by training future teachers, research scientists and managers for the industry and profession," he said.
Setting up of National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) in Ahmedabad has considerably helped in the growth of pharma education in Gujarat in the recent years. NIPER, Ahmedabad came into existence in 2007-08. It was established under the aegis of Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers. NIPER Ahmedabad has been declared as a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for advanced studies and research in Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Gujarat, hub of pharma industry, is also home to some of the premier pharma education and research centres in India. The very fact that the number of pharmacy colleges in the state has increased from around seven a decade back to around 85 last year and to 100 in the current academic year is a pointer to the fast growing pharma education in Gujarat.
The pioneers in the education field are LM College, Department of Pharmacy, MS University, Baroda and the BV Patel Pharmaceutical Education and Research Development (PERD) Centre. These institutions, apart from producing skilled manpower have immensely contributed to the research and development of the pharma industry.
Gujarat with its very strong pharma, healthcare and agriculture sectors offers an ideal platform to venture into the emerging biotechnology industry and also have very primitive scope for bioinformatics.
The state government is determined to develop capabilities of education and research in the field of bioinformatics by supporting various activities like research, training programmes, workshops, seminars etc. It is also encouraging researchers with the different kinds of project fund facilities.
Gujarat has 14 universities and more than half a dozen research institutes imparting post graduate and undergraduate courses in biotechnology and related allied sciences. About 20 institutes offer UG courses, five offers PG courses, six offers doctoral courses and seven offers diploma courses. The state produces around 5000 manpower trained in biotechnology, which includes PhDs, Post Graduates, PG Diploma, undergraduates and other diploma courses, in various biotechnology related disciplines.
The M Sc (Life Sciences) course offered by the university is a multi-disciplinary programme, advocated by the UGC for successful learning of biological sciences under "Uniumbrella concept".
The recent advances in the biological sciences have demonstrated that the training currently imparted in this field is inadequate for meaningful research. As all living systems are directly or indirectly interdependent, an inter-disciplinary and integrated approach is necessary if the course is to make any significant contribution to modern science in general and to Life Sciences in particular.
As biology is fast being transformed from a purely lab-based science to an information science as well, Gujarat with intact IT strength is poised to enhance the bio-IT fusion technology sector. It is essential to create institutional and corporate strengths in fusing bio-science and computational science to push the frontiers of life sciences.
Major advances in the field of molecular biology over the past few years including the ever growing genomic data have lead to a large amount of biological information which is difficult to decipher by the scientific community.
Some of the institutions encouraging bioinformatics education in Gujarat are Sardar Patel University; Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar ; Saurashtra University, Rajkot ; Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda and Ahmedabad Study Centre Bioinformatics Institute of India.
Apart from this, a few of the private Institutions are also running their own research projects. For example, Maharaja Sayajirao University at Baroda, a distributed information sub centre under Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India is a training & research centre, especially for genome analysis.
Similarly Indian Institute of Advanced Research (IIAR), at Raysan Village, Koba, Gandhinagar is actively working in the field of Bioinformatics. Gujarat Cancer & Research Institute (GCRI), Ahmedabad, is a Regional Cancer Centre of Government of India. A joint venture of Government of Gujarat & Gujarat Cancer Society, for Cancer Research, Education and Treatments is also working for bioinformatics & proteomic research.