DR YUSUF Hamied, who has saved the lives of more than 10 million HIV patients in Africa by using his pharmaceutical company in India,Cipla, to supply cheap antiretroviral drugs, is still thinking big.
For the last few years, he has funded a scheme whereby the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK teaches a group of 42 specially recruited chemistry teachers in India to spread their skills to other teachers, who in turn teach yet more teachers in an ever widening pool.
After four successful years, Hamied is renewing finance for the “RSC-Yusuf Hamied science programme” for another four years. “It is to take teachers not only in chemistry but also in physics, maths and biology but under the auspices of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
In the next four years, they are planning to teach 20,000 teachers in India.” What Hamied wants to do is take knowledge from the UK to India, the two countries that mean most to him. He spent possibly his happiest years as an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
In summer, he hosted a “reunion dinner” at Christ’s for batchmates who “matriculated” with him in 1954 – 30 out of the 73 still living from the original 126 freshers turned up. “I met a number after a gap of over 60 years– a truly memorable evening,” sighs Hamied.
In July this year, when Hamied was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s most prestigious scientific body whose origins go back to 1660, he laid out his philosophy that the pharma industry couldn’t simply be a money- making operation. It had to strive to make affordable medicines available to the poor, the needy and the sick.
That Cipla UK is doing well could be good for the NHS. “This year our business here will be well over £100m. England was the centre for our European organisation – now we have asmall office in Munich. We sell to the NHS, to retail wholesalers, then it goes to the pharmacy shops. England is definitely a growing business.
”Having inherited the reins of a company set up by his father, Khwaja Abdul Hamied, in 1935 at the behest of Mahatma Gandhi, he could tell the Royal Society in his acceptance speech: “The pharma industry is different from other industries.
We have to combine business acumen with a humanitarian responsibility. We are the custodians of healthcare and are responsible for the welfare and treatment of patients to overcome disease and lead a better quality of life. “My own role in the coming years will also involve a closer examination of five new technologies that are already revolutionising
healthcare – 3D artificial intelligence, digitalisation, automation, flow chemistry and continuous manufacture. For some time, medical science has been shifting from chemistry to biology. We therefore need to rethink, redesign and rebuild a fresh approach to tackle the ongoing problems of healthcare.
“My mantra in life has been to provide access to affordable medicines and that none should be denied medication. The disease profile in the emerging countries is frightening and is in continuous crisis. We need newer, adaptable technologies to prioritise healthcare, and create a world where every citizen can dream of a decent quality of life.”
He says the poor in India suffer from many diseases but the country’s biggest problem, as is the case with many other parts of the world, is over population – up from 390 million in undivided India in 1947 to 1.3 billion today.
“I remember in 1960 when I returned to Bombay (now Mumbai) from Cambridge, its population was 2m. Today, it is 24m. And government statistics say that in 2050 Bombay will exceed 40m.” A larger population means swifter transmission of waterborne diseases and infections and greater pollution.
“Delhi pollution is like smoking 20 cigarettes a day.”Thanks to Hamied’s generosity, leading Fellows from the Royal Society will each spendthree months in India. This year alone there will be five academics, all world authorities in their respective fields.They include Jonathan Ashmore (biophysics)from University College London;
Malcolm Burrows (zoology) from Cambridge; Stephen Busby (biochemistry) from Birmingham; Richard Morris (neuroscience) from Edinburgh; and Richard Zare (natural science) from Stanford in California. Hamied got the idea from his own student days in 1950s’ Cambridge when his mentor at Christ’s, Lord Alexander Todd, brought over Prof Burns Woodward, a world famous organic chemist from Boston. “He interacted with us students.”
The experience rubbed off on the young Hamied, who is now trying to replicate the experiment for India. Woodward went on to win a Nobel Prize in 1965, as Todd himself had done in 1957. But Hamied is not satisfied. He says there was something that struck him at the admissions ceremony for new Fellows. “I noticed at the Royal Society the other day that these academics don’t apply their knowledge. They have done this, that or the other but only in the lab. “Suddenly in this day and age, I am finding that this is not enough. The number of educated unemployed, at least, in India is growing. There are not enough jobs, not enough opportunities, so my new thinking is implementation.
What I did personally was implement the knowledge that I had gained (at Cambridge) when I went back.” This idea is still in its early stages but he wants to act as a link between the 60,000 members of the Royal Society of Chemistry and possible partners in India. And he wants to do the same with the Royal Society, which currently has nearly 1,700 Fellows, of whom over 60 are Nobel Laureates.
The Cipla boss is willing to pay for a small office in London if the Royal Society of Chemistry would get in touch with its members all over the world with this message from Hamied: “If any of you have any knowhow, technology, patents that you would like to share with emerging markets such as India, why don’t you write to us and we will take up the dissemination of your project? This would not be free – you will get a royalty because we will put you in touch with persons interested in your project.”
“I am acting as a catalyst,” Hamied tells Eastern Eye. “We could do the same with the Royal Society.” As he knows there are many people of Indian origin in both groups, he asks: “What more can Indians who are abroad do for their country?” He sums up: “Spreading knowledge has been uppermost in my philanthropy for India.”
