Pune varsity joins hands with ten international varsities for public health

Pune: With an aim to produce effective drug therapies in order to combat diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis, malaria and swine flu, the University of Pune has joined hands with a US-based varsity, Penn State, and other nine universities across the globe. The other issues which will find emphasis in the collaboration are adequate nutritional needs of the society and public health care policies.
The selected researchers from each varsity will conduct extensive research in the domains that they have been allotted. Pune University’s role will be to use Ayurveda effectively, and look for alternate therapies to combat the challenges in the medical field.
University of Pune is the only varsity from the country, which is going to contribute to the project. Two of its researchers, Dr Bhushan Patwardhan and Dipti Devbaugkar, will be the key members of the group and their emphasis will be to conduct research using traditional methods of the Ayurveda.
“We are already collaborating with the Penn State University and several exchange programmes are taking place in various fields between both the varsities. As apart of the collaboration, a particular research expedition in health care section has been initiated,” said Dr Wasudev Gade, vice-chancellor, University of Pune, adding, “Our emphasis will be on combining the knowledge of Ayurveda, our rich tradition of medicine and its age-old techniques, for new and effective drug discovery.”
According to Gade, as a part of the research, extensive surveys will be done in healthcare domain. “In these surveys, issues such as why malnutrition still continues to be a problem will be studied,” added Gade. The entire project will be funded by a US-based agency.