The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Foreign doctors, nurses in Saudi Arabia could take MERS global Posted: 18 May 2014 06:43 AM PDT From Houston to Manila, doctors and nurses are recruited for lucrative postings in Saudi Arabia, where MERS was first identified in 2012. Because the kingdom has stepped up hiring of foreign healthcare professionals in the last few years, disease experts said, there is a good chance the MERS virus will hitch a ride on workers as they return home. "This is how MERS might spread around the world," said infectious disease expert Dr Amesh Adalja of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It can take five to 14 days for someone infected with MERS to show symptoms, more than enough time for a contagious person to fly to the other side of the world without being detectable. Healthcare workers "are at extremely high risk of contracting MERS compared to the general public," Adalja said. The threat has attracted new attention with the confirmation of the first two MERS cases in the United States. Both are healthcare workers who fell ill shortly after leaving their work in Saudi hospitals and boarding planes bound west. About one-third of the MERS cases treated in hospitals in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah were healthcare workers, according to the World Health Organization. Despite the risk, few of the healthcare workers now in, or planning to go to, Saudi Arabia are having second thoughts about working there, according to nurses, doctors and recruiters interviewed by Reuters. Michelle Tatro, 28, leaves next week for the kingdom, where she will work as an open-heart-surgery nurse. Tatro, who typically does 13-week stints at hospitals around the United States, said her family had sent her articles about MERS, but she wasn't worried. "I was so glad to get this job," she told Reuters. "Travel is my number one passion." So far, international health authorities have not publicly expressed concern about the flow of expatriate medical workers to and from Saudi Arabia. "There is not much public health authorities or border agents can do," said infectious disease expert Dr Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. "Sure, they can ask people, 'did you work in a healthcare facility in Saudi Arabia,' but if the answer is yes, then what?" Healthcare workers are best placed to understand the MERS risk, Osterholm said, and "there should be a heightened awareness among them of possible MERS symptoms." Neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to questions about whether they were considering monitoring healthcare workers returning to the US. Soaring demand In the last few years, the number of expatriates working in Saudi Arabia has soared, said Suleiman Arabie, managing director of Houston, Texas-based recruiting firm SA International, with thousands now working in the kingdom. About 15% of physicians working in the kingdom are American or European, and some 40 % of nurses are Filipino or Malaysian, according to estimates by recruiters and people who have worked in hospitals there. The majority of US-trained medical staff are on one- or two-year contracts, which results in significant churn as workers rotate in and out of Saudi medical facilities. The Saudi government is building hundreds of hospitals and offering private companies interest-free loans to help build new facilities. Its healthcare spending jumped to US$27 billion last year from US$8 billion in 2008. Building the hospitals is one challenge, staffing them with qualified personnel is another. Arabie's firm is trying to fill positions at two dozen medical facilities in Saudi Arabia for pulmonologists, a director of nursing, a chief of physiotherapy and scores more. Doctors in lucrative, in-demand specialties such as cardiology and oncology can make US$1 million for a two-year contract, recruiters said. Nurses' pay depends on their home country, with those from the US and Canada earning around US$60,000 a year while those from the Philippines get about US$12,000, recruiters said. That typically comes with free transportation home, housing, and 10 weeks of paid vacation each year. For Americans, any income under about US$100,000 earned abroad is tax-free, adding to the appeal of a Saudi posting. One Filipina nurse, who spoke anonymously so as not to hurt her job prospects, told Reuters that she was "willing to go to Saudi Arabia because I don't get enough pay here." In a private hospital in Manila, she made 800 pesos (about US$18) a day. "I know the risks abroad but I'd rather take it than stay here," she said. "I am not worried about MERS virus. I know how to take care of myself and I have the proper training." None of Arabie's potential candidates "have expressed any concern" about MERS. Only one of the hundreds of professionals placed by Toronto-based medical staffing firm Helen Ziegler & Associates Inc. decided to return to the United States because of MERS, it said, and one decided not to accept a job in Jeddah she had been hired for. Recruitment agencies in Manila have also continued to send nurses to the kingdom since the MERS outbreak, said Hans Leo Cacdac, the head of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. The government advises that returning workers be screened for MERS, Labour and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said this week. Expat healthcare workers now working in Saudi Arabia feel confident local authorities are taking the necessary steps to combat the spread of MERS in hospitals. "Just today they came and put up giant posters in our hospital on MERS," said Dr Taher Kagalwala, a pediatrician originally from Mumbai who works at Al Moweh General Hospital in a town about 120 miles from Tai'f city in western Saudi Arabia "I have not heard of or seen any healthcare workers looking to leave their jobs or return to their countries because of the MERS panic. If it was happening, there would have been gossip very soon." – Reuters, May 18, 2014 |
| AstraZeneca arrays academic assets in Pfizer defence Posted: 18 May 2014 04:45 AM PDT The lab's four towers – clearly visible from arriving trains – help keep vibrations and noise away from highly sensitive equipment. Scientists who work there have said it is "simply too dangerous" to let AstraZeneca be bought by the American group. AstraZeneca plans to move its own research and corporate headquarters to the plot next door to the lab, which has earned 10 Nobel prizes. The company is emphasising a strategic research alliance it has agreed with the laboratory's owner, the publicly funded Medical Research Council (MRC). AstraZeneca says it wants the relationship to be symbiotic. The group – subject of a US$100 billion-plus bid approach from Pfizer – hopes the collaboration can help accelerate the development of new, ground-breaking drugs and revitalise its business, placing it at the core of a growing cluster of expertise around Cambridge. The site is due to be completed in 2016. Other large drugmakers have built research outposts in Cambridge and US life science centres like Boston and San Francisco, but none have undertaken such a wholesale move of operations. While Pfizer says it will complete the planned research centre if it buys AstraZeneca, it has not said how many staff it will have in Cambridge or elsewhere. AstraZeneca's Cambridge ambitions go further than simply relocating its scientists and top management in a leading university town. Under the deal with the MRC, the drugmaker will give academics access to more than two million molecules in AstraZeneca's compound library, which they can develop as they will, giving AstraZeneca first refusal on any potential drugs. "This is what I've always asked for," said Hugh Pelham, director of the biology lab, which is known as MRC LMB. The arrangement will appeal to scientists' professional ambitions, by encouraging research for publication in scientific journals, "crossing the road between academia and industry" and even stimulating some to start their own companies, he told visiting journalists last week. Cycling to work When it comes to sparking great scientific ideas, much depends on human connections which have been years in the making, Pelham said. AstraZeneca's small existing biotech operation in Cambridge, known as MedImmune, has roots going back 25 years to the time when a scientist-led company, Cambridge Antibody Technology, was spun out from the big MRC biology lab. "There are people there that we know. People are married to people there," Pelham said. Being near to each other – cycling to work together – is a "very significant cultural feature of Cambridge". More than 1,600 firms have been created as a result of collaborations between academia and the private sector in Cambridge, and the university's 4.9 billion pounds (US$8.25 billion) collective endowment is Europe's largest. AstraZeneca's collaboration with MRC LMB will help Cambridge compete for pharmaceutical innovation, said Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca's Executive Vice President, Innovative Medicines & Early Development. The company's new headquarters, designed to have multiple entrances, will be "very porous and very permeable to the academic community" and look in onto a courtyard like one of the city's historic colleges, he added. Academic and corporate scientists will work side by side, with perhaps only the logos on their lab coats to distinguish them. Pangalos, who previously worked at Pfizer, avoided comparing the two companies' approach. But he said AstraZeneca was centred now on science-driven innovation, and a collaborative approach. "This takes years of relationship building and it's also quite fragile," Pangalos added. "If you destabilise that - turn it on its head – I think that will have a huge detrimental effect on the UK." – Reuters, May 18, 2014 |
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