New health innovation ecosystem launched to combat antibiotic resistance

To address antibiotic resistance, an initiative titled, 'Health Innovation Ecosystem: A Way Forward to Combat Antibiotic Resistance' was launched today (8 April)  at the auditorium of the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka (IBA DU).

CRID (USA), in collaboration with the ICT Division of the Government of Bangladesh, the Directorate General of Health Services, IDEA Project, IBA DU, Bangladesh Medical Students' Society (BMSS), Ahsanullah University of Science & Technology, Daffodil International University and Kambaii Health launched this health-innovation platform as part of the bigger initiative to create an innovation startup eco-system in Bangladesh, reads a press release. 

This platform will create collaboration among patients, physicians, and pharmacists via the Kambaii Health App to ensure appropriate prescription and purchase of antibiotics.

'Antibiotic resistance is becoming a global public health issue. Our healthcare providers are not really following what they should be doing. They are prescribing one or two antibiotics without going through a proper investigation.' said the former director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Monir Islam.  

The Director of IBA DU, Prof Mohammad A Momen highlighted the importance of managers and business graduates in the public health sector to further public health initiatives.

'A health innovation ecosystem will be instrumental in combating this crisis which will also drive healthcare technology startups and pharmaceutical companies as well as attract foreign direct investments in Bangladesh,' said a second-year student of IBA DU and the event coordinator Shah Adaan Uzzaman, who is also the blog administrator of the specialist English blog The Confluence.

BMSS representatives Md Ragib Shahriar and Iftekhar Ahmed Sakib collaborated with the organisers to accelerate the cause of fighting antibiotic resistance in Bangladesh.

Wilfred Ngwa (John Hopkins School of Medicine), Dr Sayeda Yasmin Karim (Harvard Medical School), Ashdeep (UC Berkley), Dr Nowreen Haq (John Hopkins School of Medicine), Mehedi Shams (president and co-founder, CRID-USA), Md Altaf Hossain (project director, IDEA), Dr Md Shadat Hossain (director, MIS, DG Health), Dr Muhammad Fali Illahi (VC, AUST), Dr Saklayen Russel (head, Vascular Surgery at Ibrahim Cardiac Hospital and Research Institute) and Dr Hossain Md Al-Amin (program head, CRID-USA) joined as a panellist at the event.