Demanding more attention from the government, academicians and research fellows at the University Research Centre in Pharmacy (RCP) under the MG University in Kerala are planning to approach the state government for remedial measures to strengthen the research activities of the centre and upgrade it into national level.

The researchers will soon meet the Governor, the chief minister and the health minister and apprise them of the matter. This research centre under the MG University is the only one drug research centre in the government sector in Kerala, said Dr. Abdul Wahab, senior lecturer in the department of pharmacy.

“This centre is where more number of students doing researches in pharmacy in Kerala. Presently, 15 research fellows are here, majority of them are girls. Eight fellows already received their Ph D. But governmental attention is needed more, more fund should be allotted, more facilities should be set up. If so, this can be raised into the position of a national research centre in pharmacy,” he said.

According to him, the acceptability and importance of herbal drugs are increasing in Kerala like everywhere. If the RCP of the MG University is developed into a bigger research facility, collaborative research work can be done there by joining with Ayush manufacturing units and educational institutions. In the case of conducting clinical researches for new drug development and also for research activities for drug manufacturing companies, the potential of this centre can be utilized. Most modern equipment, well equipped lab and the large animal house of this centre can help a lot for the industry and clinical research centres.

While speaking to Pharmabiz, Dr. Abdul Wahab said the state government has solved a burning issue the School of Medical Education (SME) was facing for a long time. With the intervention of the government, the Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS) will further start issuing equivalency certificates to the courses of the SME from this year. The SME under the MG University is conducting degree and PG courses in pharmacy and Ph D programmes from 1984. After Thiruvananthapuram medical college, MG University’s school of pharmacy was the second institution started a B Pharma course in Kerala. But when KUHS started in 2010, by order of the government all medical and para-medical education courses of all universities affiliated to the health university. But MG University did not hand over the courses offered by the SME   to the health university. However, KUHS gave a period of five years for affiliation, which ended in 2015. Because of no affiliation with KUHS, the health university in last year took the decision to stop issuing equivalency certificates to the pharmacy degrees of the MG university.

The decision of the KUHS was a big concern for the students and researchers of SME under the MG University. However it was solved now with the intervention of the government. SME is conducting more than 25 courses of para-medical courses including pharmacy. Pharmacy centres are at Cheruvandoor and at Puthuppally.