ABSTRACT
University of Karbala College of Medicine (UKCM), Iraq, conducted a three days' workshop on Medical Education and medical writing. The UKCM is now transforming to conform with the latest trends of modern education. This will help to re-shape the future of medical education and produce capable doctors. This requires a strong faculty, which is sound in teaching, training, learning improvement, research capacity building, and leadership development. The capacity building of faculty at UKCM has been initiated in collaboration with Medics International at a local and government level and includes a series of workshops and online symposia. This educational activity was conducted after a delay of three years due to COVID-19. A three-day refresher course was conducted in the first week of August, 2022. Medical writing is another important feature which has been continuously covered by UKMM since many years with the collaboration of Al-Sadiq International Virtual University (SIVU) and Imamia Medics International (IMI).
ABSTRACT
The government of Pakistan started vaccination campaign for the frontline healthcare pro-viders, as they are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 patients. In the next step, it ex-tended the free vaccination campaign to include people above 60 and 50 years of age re-spectively. The drive is now open to all citizens >18 years of age. There is a significant re-luctance to get vaccinated even though the government has provided it free of cost. The project uses self-reporting method to assess reasons of vaccine hesitancy among Pakistanis and possible solutions to overcome this problem. Concern for serious side effects was the most common issue 154 (48.42%) reported among all groups of people, including the healthcare workers. The major sources of COVID-19 related information were television 117 (36.8%) and healthcare professionals 105 (33%). The participants reported that they can be convinced to get vaccinated if more published data related to vaccine efficacy and safety is available 118 (37.1%), they observe no side effect among vaccine recipients 90 (28.3%) or higher government officials get the same vaccine 39 (12.3%). Vigorous analysis and publication of data generated is paramount to increase the percentage of people being vaccinated. The healthcare professionals should share evidence-based knowledge related to vaccine efficacy and safety through television and social media to increase acceptance rates and hence, decrease mortality and morbidity from COVID-19 in Pakistan.
ABSTRACT
Vaccines are the most safe, effective and economical mean of controlling Pandemic. Vaccines work by activating the natural immune response of human body. Vaccine manufacturing companies around the world sprang into action as soon as the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus was shared by the Chinese authorities, early 2020. Moderna of the USA and a joint US-German vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTec, Sinovac, CanSino and AstraZeneca are among the leading names. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a new approach to develop vaccines for SARS-CoV-2. Traditional vaccines produce the immune response by injecting a killed, or attenuated germ into human bodies. New mRNA vaccine, on the other hand, teaches the human cells to make a protein or even just a piece of a protein, that triggers an immune response inside the human. The mRNA vaccines have several benefits over traditional vaccines such as shorter manufacturing duration, stronger immune response and no post-inoculation viral activation. The traditional vaccine activates only humoral immune response and synthesize antibodies, whereas, mRNA vaccine triggers both humoral and cellular immune response. Traditional vaccines use weakened pathogen that, although rarely, can re-activate to cause infection in severely immune-compromised patients. There is no such danger with mRNA vaccine or recombinant techniques. The FDA has now approved many COVID-19 vaccines for use, so far.