Achieving a global standard of health requires creating new pharmaceutical tools says Professor Kishor Wasan
Global Orphan Diseases Under-Medicated and Over-Medicalized, Professor Kishor Wasan Said
SASKATOON, SK, CANADA, October 13, 2021 – If you live in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, or anywhere in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or most of the European Union, chances are you never have a conversation starts like this:”Hi. How’s your mom’s leprosy doing?”
You never write a note to your child’s teacher asking them to be excused because they are at home nursing a Buruli tumor. If you have tuberculosis, you can find treatment. If you have HIV or AIDS, you can lead a more or less normal life.
People who live in wealthy nations generally receive excellent medical care. There is a treatment for nearly every disease. It is possible to get an education, hold a job, maintain a home, and raise a family.
Not so in much of the world, says Professor Kishor Wasan. A long list of orphan diseases including the aforementioned Buruli tumor and leprosy, Chagas disease, cysticercosis, dengue, dracunculiasis,echinococcosis, food-borne trematodiasis, human African trypanosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, rabies, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiases, snakebite, trachoma, and yaws.
Diseases that many modern doctors have never encountered make life miserable for billions of people across most of the “south” of the globe.
On the one hand, effective drug treatments for many of these diseases do not exist. On the other hand, treating these diseases is seen mainly in terms of a medical model, rather than expanding concern to clean water, clean air, decent housing, and food for people who struggle with them.
Professor Kishor Wasan has devoted years of his professional life to finding ways to relieve the suffering of billions of people whose lives are limited by global orphan diseases.
Author of 240 peer-reviewed papers and 280 abstracts, Dr. Wasan has also served as the Director of the Neglected Global Diseases Initiative at the University of British Columbia, Professor and Dean of the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan, He was a principal researcher in the development of a form of the antibiotic amphotericin B that can be taken by mouth rather than requiring an IV. He has led research in the use of nanoparticles for drug delivery. As the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer at Skymount Medical in Calgary, he promotes the company’s mission to “”To become the leading global provider of innovative treatments to improve global health using AI, drone based delivery, custom drug discovery and satellite technology.
But Dr. Wasan never forgets that healthy people in thriving communities need more than medicines and more than medicine. He advocates giving nurse practitioners and pharmacists more pharmaceutical tools and the autonomy to use them.
Even for medically advanced societies, Dr. Wasan notes,”creation of positions for autonomous advanced practice nurses (including nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists) was associated with improved case management, stronger collaborative decision-making, reduced readmission rates, reduced waitlist times, positive relationships with physicians, smoother transitions for patients and families within the healthcare system, improved continuity, a strengthened patient and family focus and improved patient satisfaction.”
For Professor Kishor Wasan, achieving a global standard of health requires creating new pharmaceutical tools and giving more people the power to use them. Higher quality healthcare at an affordable price, Dr. Wasan says, is a right everyone should have.
Caroline Hunter
Web Presence, LLC
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