Dr. Girish Sahni to Address PGI Fraternity on “Explorations at the Frontiers of Affordable Bio-Medicine: Silver Linings Among Dark Clouds”

By 121 News

Chandigarh 15^th July:- Dr. Girish Sahni, Secretary, Department of Science & Industrial Research, Government of India and Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi will deliver an address on "Explorations at the frontiers of affordable bio-medicine: Silver linings among dark clouds" to the PGI fraternity during the Foundation Day celebrations on Monday, 17^th July, 2017 at 8:00 AM in Bhargava Auditorium.

Dr. Girish Sahni has contributed significantly in the area of protein cardiovascular drugs especially 'clot busters' and their mode of action in the human body. Lead teams responsible for producing technology for India's first indigenous clot bluster drug, natural streptokinase, (under brand name 'STPase' marketed by Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Ahmedabad), and recombinant streptokinase (produced by Shasun Drugs, Chennai) marketed as several brand names eg. 'Klotbuster' (Alembic) and 'LupiFlo'(Lupin). He developed a novel life-saver thrombolytic drug (Clot-specific streptokinase) India's first bio therapeutic molecule which is not a Biosimilar that has been patented worldwide, and licensed to a US Pharma company in 2006. He recently, developed Fourth-generation 'Anti-thrombotic' clot busters that have been out-licensed in multi-million dollar deals.

PGIMER completes fifty-four years of its existence and entered the 55^th year on 7^th July, 2017. Conceived in 1961 with the concurrence of the Planning Commission, the Institute started functioning in 1962. The Institute was formally inaugurated on July 7, 1963 by the then Prime Minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru.  Within a short period of 4 years, the PGI was declared as an "Institute of National Importance" by an Act of Parliament on 1st April, 1967 (Act 51 of 1966).  The first batch of postgraduates was admitted in January 1963.

PGIMER has been the first institute in the country to initiate many DM and MCh courses, as well as the PhD programmes in clinical sciences.  These courses are now available in most of the medical, surgical and pediatric super-specialties. The Institute has nearly 490 faculty members, 1100 resident doctors, 2663 nurses and 464 nursing students, and 420 PhD and paramedical students.

PGIMER the only Institute of its kind north of Delhi caters to a large number of patients. The hospital has almost 2000 beds has an OPD attendance of around 8000-11000 patients per day. During the last year around 25 lac patients visited OPD and nearly 90,000 patients got admitted.

As the enormous number of patients is rising by more than one lac every year, to decongest the present hospital there are various plans to add more number of beds and different type of centres.

·  A 250 bedded hospital parallel to Nehru Hospital will be completed by next year.

·  New OPDs and Trauma Centre will be constructed at Sarangpur.

·  Centres like Mother and Child Centre and Neurosciences Centre will be constructed on the PGI campus.

·  Satellite Centre at Sangrur will be expanded from the present OPD to a full-fledged 300 bedded hospital.

We are also performing organ transplant surgeries viz. Kidney, heart, pancreas and liver transplant highest in the public sector hospital. On 11^th July, 2017, PGI accomplished another milestone in the Transplant Surgery by performing its first ever Lung Transplant and thus became the first public sector hospital in the country to do so.