‘Steady funding needed to deal with pandemics’

NEW DELHI: The world tends to lose focus on science and research in between health emergencies, one of pharmaceutical industry’s top executives has said, flagging the lack of consistent funding and effort that hobbles the ability to prepare for pandemics.

Speaking on the fourth day of the 20th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit,

Dr Vas Narasimhan, chief executive officer of Novartis, shared insights on his learnings from the Covid pandemic, the future of the Swiss-american pharma behemoth he heads, the technologies of future medicines, and how more needs to be done to tackle health emergencies.

The need to invest in science in the long term was one of the most important lessons from the pandemic, Dr Narasimhan said, citing the breakthrough coronavirus vaccines made on the MRNA platform. “In MRNA, investment started in late 1960s and really matured over 30-40 years, so [the pandemic showed] you need to invest in long-term in science to come up with critical breakthroughs,” he said. Dr Narasimhan has worked at Novartis for 18 years, and took over as the chief executive in 2018.