Reflections on Trial Run of Vaccine

REFLECTIONS ON TRIAL RUN OF SINOPHARM COVID 19 VACCINE BY WESTFORD ALUMNI MAHMOUD AL-RAMAHI

Mahmoud Al-Ramahi is the lead pharmacist at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City [SKMC] in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Mahmoud played a critical role as the Pharmacy Supervisor in the phase-3 trial run of Sinopharm Vaccine held in Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre [ADNEC] from July-September 2020. His responsibilities included organizing and coordinating the pharmacy sta, managing the inbound and outbound logistics of the vaccine, ensuring the storage of the vaccines in the prescribed temperature, and the documentation work.

Mahmoud shares his experience with passion and accountability: “There were around 25 pharmacy sta members working under my supervision and we had to collaborate with over 40,000 volunteers registered during the trial vaccination drive. We received the trial vaccines in the morning from the G42 stores and my responsibility included ensuring that the vaccines are handled, transferred, and stored at the proper temperature and the unused vaccines are returned. I ordered a specific number of vaccines every day according to the number of appointments through all registered volunteers may not have reported”.

The experience of collaborating on a historic project spearheaded by SEHA (Abudhabi Health Authority) is shared with a lot of humility and compassion by Mahmoud who would surely mark this as a milestone in his three-decade-long professional contributions.

ASTRAZENECA RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT- ‘TURNING SCIENCE INTO MEDICINE’ BY WESTFORD MBA STUDENT HANINE MAZBOUH

My organization is a global science-led, biopharmaceutical business and our innovative medicines are used by millions of people worldwide. It is driven by science, united by science, and every day, we push the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing medicines in different therapy areas: Oncology, Respiratory & Immunology, Cardiovascular Renal & Metabolism.

Our Response to COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge to humanity that demands a global, united response, not just from the scientific community but also from industry, organizations, governments, and every single person around the globe. Since early 2020 when the true scale of the crisis became clear, AstraZeneca has committed to help defeat COVID-19 by harnessing and sharing our scientific knowledge and expertise to advance and accelerate the development of potential medicines to prevent or treat the virus. It has donated nine million face masks to support healthcare workers in 49 countries, bolstered the national COVID-19 testing effort, and initiated clinical trials to investigate our new and existing medicines to see how they could treat the infection. Recognizing the urgent need for a vaccine to defeat the virus, it joined forces with the University of Oxford, bringing together its world-class expertise in vaccinology with its global development and manufacturing capabilities. We have accelerated clinical development and rapidly mobilized partnerships and a global supply chain that will support a broad, timely, and equitable supply of a safe and effective vaccine around the world, and at no profit during the pandemic. The largest vaccination program in history is underway to protect against COVID-19; the COVAX initiative brings together the public and private sectors to ensure everyone, regardless of wealth, has access to a safe and effective vaccine; 190 countries have signed-up to support its mission to protect the world’s most vulnerable.

Over the past week, tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine have been landing at airports around the world through the multilateral COVAX initiative. A new digital-first campaign for the vaccine was launched last week: “Our commitment- a vaccine for everyone”. What makes this new campaign stand out is that the content is told through the stories and experiences of people across the company and beyond who are helping to deliver AstraZeneca’s commitment to the world. Bolstered by our resiliency, our employees have maintained momentum, drawing motivation from our values to ‘follow the science, do the right thing and put patients first.

REFLECTIONS ON PFIZER COVID VACCINE BY WESTFORD ALUMNI MARWAN NASRY

Marwan Nasry is the Category Lead for Pfizer Biopharma in Iraq. Marwan leads Pfizer’s commercial operations to bring Pfizer’s breakthrough products in the areas of vaccines and inflammation/immunology to the patients in Iraq.

Westford University College is proud of the professional contributions made by Marwan who is our alumni. He shares his experience of 15 years with Pfizer and his most recent project; launching the vaccine to fight the current Pandemic. I am fortunate to be a COVID Vaccine Launch Navigator responsible for planning the COVID vaccine project in collaboration with the healthcare professionals and health authorities. The project is to bring forward vaccines and therapies to address the tragic pandemic, which is aligned with Pfizer’s purpose “Delivering scientific breakthroughs to change patients’ lives”. To the outside world, it may appear that COVID-19 is the only thing Pfizer has been working on for the past year, but we made sure that despite lockdowns and travel restrictions, we continued to serve hundreds of millions of patients around the world who rely on our medicines and vaccines.

I would like to share our CEO Albert Bourla’s quote “When I think of 2020, I choose to think of all the good that we saw – both within Pfizer and around the world. Time and time again, we saw people extending a hand to help those in need. They shared their resources, their talent, and their time. Sometimes, they simply shared a smile, but that was enough to lift someone’s spirits and deliver a spark of hope.”

At Pfizer, the “how” is represented by four simple, powerful values – courage, excellence, equity, and joy – that define our company and our culture, we act with integrity every day & we believe we will make great progress in leading the conversation and becoming known as the most patient-centric company.