BELGRADE: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for DoNER and MoS PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh held a luncheon meeting here today with some of the Belgrade’s leading citizens from fields of academics, literature, Medicine, trade, pharmaceuticals, research, linguistics, etc.
The meeting was held at the official residence of Indian Ambassador to Serbia, Narinder Chauhan.
Irena Vojackova, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative to Serbia,Prof. Aleksandar Petrovic from Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Prof Dr. Vuk Stambolovic University Professor and Alternative Medicine expert, Ljiljana Lazic Director, UTI, Belgrade, Dr. Vladimir Miklic, Assistant Director for Organization of Production, Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Stefan Vukicevic, General Manager, Glotec Ltd, Dr Prof Jocuci from Public Health, Vesna Jovovic from Himalaya herbal cosmetics and Aleksandar Jankovic, Director, A-lek Pharmaceuticals, among others, attended the meeting.
A number of inputs emerged during over one-and-a-half hour meeting and several future road maps were also discussed .
The scholars from academics and literature informed Dr Jitendra that the Serbian language script drew many of its cues and ingredients from the ancient Sanskrit language of India. In response, the minister disclosed that the Indian Ambassador in Belgrade was taking the initiative of setting up an “India Chair” or “Hindi Chair” in the University. This would enable closer academic interaction between the two nations and would benefit scholars from both the countries.
The executives from pharmaceutical industry revealed that several indigenous medicines and drugs were extremely popular in Serbia. They said, some of the Indian herbal medicines like Liv-52, Cestona, Diabecon, etc. were household names over here. The homeopathic stream of medicine was also fast picking up, they added. In response, Dr Jitendra invited the Serbian members of pharmaceutical industry to visit India and said, he would arrange their interaction with their counterparts in India. He said, they should seek to learn from each other’s experience.
Dr Singh enquired about the prevalence of Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus in Serbia and was informed that it was currently around 10%. In response, he said, India has acquired a vast experience in the management of Diabetes partly because of its very high incidence and partly also because some of the peculiar predispositions of the Indian phenotype. He said, there is need for more interaction between the clinicians from these two regions and regretted that in most of the Diabetes related scientific conferences, the participation from Serbia is relatively low as compared to other countries.
Representatives from trade said that they were faced with a peculiar problem in the aftermath of the recent crisis related to European Economic Union, as a result of which many of the Indian products including medicines could not be brought directly from India, but had to be imported via one of the member nations of European Union. Dr Jitendra Singh advised the Ambassador to take up the issue with the concerned Ministries in the Government of Serbia so that a way out could be found out to ensure ease of business.