UNAIR NEWS –As a country with the second largest megadiversity in the world, Indonesia certainly has a lot of natural resources beneficial for the treatment of diseases in very large quantities.That was the focus of Prof.Dr.Ahmad Fu’ad, M.S., Apt., in his scientific oration in the inauguration of professors held at Garuda Mukti Hall, Campus C, , Thursday, December 28.
In the oration entitled “Revealing the Diversity of Chemical Content and Bioactivity in Natural Medicinal Material”, Prof.Fuad said that Indonesia is blessed by Allah SWT as the country with the second largest megadiversity in the world.It is a tremendous potential.
“Wealth of natural resources that we have if supported by the excellent human resources capable of exploring natural materials to be a product in pharmaceutical industry will make this nation a healthy and efficient nation,” he explained.
The abundant pharmaceutical industry products, added the 22nd active professor of Faculty of Pharmacy, made Indonesia independent in the field of medicine as mandated in the current government program.In this regard, UNAIR through its researchers has conducted international research collaborations to explore natural resources and develop new drugs.
“So, we can conclude that UNAIR has good capacity in the field,” he said.
Furthermore, the 179th professor from UNAIR since achieving status as PTN BH also stated that UNAIR’s involvement can be seen from its first research on the exploration of medicinal plant wealth to obtain active compound working as anti-viral hepatitis C and second research on microbial richness exploration to obtain anti amoeba and anti malaria active compound.
“In this research, communication and other cooperation was then established to strengthen similar research networks to achieve global recognition,” he explained.
At the end, the professor who served as secretary of Institute of Tropical Disease (ITD) revealed that the results of the research collaboration have provided a powerful research power on technology mastery and the quality of their output.This is due to research equipments obtained from collaborative research grants, more advanced and sophisticated equipments in Indonesia.
“Thus, UNAIR will be more steady to participate actively in drug independence program in Indonesia on natural medicine,” he concluded.(*)
Author: Nuri Hermawan
Editor: Feri Fenoria
