The second PSSLD Journal Club was held by the Dr. Muhammad Akram, a well-known Gastroenterologist in Multan, Assistant Professor at Multan Medical College. This webinar was conducted on 9th May, 2020 and nearly 600 participants joined this online session on Hepatology and liver diseases. The main topic of this session was “ WHAT IS NEW IN FATTY LIVER DISEASE: SAY MAFLD; NOT NAFLD”.
PSSLD Journal Club is a series of webinars hosted by Pakistan society for the Liver Diseases (PSSLD). The first PSSLD Journal Club was initiated on 2nd May, 2020. The first session was hosted by the Dr. Yousuf Shah from Peshawar. He’s an expert in Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist based in Peshawar.
PSSLD hosted a webinar on covid-19 on 19 April, 2020 to increase the awareness about the covid-19 and its critical effects on the liver and digestive system in human body. The virtual meeting was moderated by the Dr. Zahid Azam, Head of Department at Dow University of Health Sciences. Dr. Zaigham Abbas, chairperson of PSSLD and Head of Department of Gastroenterology at Dr. Ziauddin Hopital, Clifton Karachi were also a part of this crucial online session. On the other hand, Dr. Wasim Jafri, professor & associate Dean at Agha Khan University, Dr. Amna Subhan, who is consultant at Agha Khan University, and Dr. Saeed Hamid, Professor, Department of Medicine and Director of the Clinical Trials Unit at The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. This event provided guidelines for hepatic diseases in the context of novel Covid-19. Moreover, the precautions and the possible treatments were discussed at a great length, creating the awareness among liver patients and hepatitis patients.
This seminar was planned to be conducted for two days from 29th March to 30th March, 2020. Unfortunately, this event could not be made possible due to the covid-19 pandemic in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Society for the Study of Liver Disease (PSSLD) has been successfully conducting a CME activity for the past nine years, entitled ‘The Training In Emerging Advances in the Management of Chronic Hepatitis for Health Care Professionals in Pakistan’-THE TEACH PAK PROJECT”. Through this activity, we have trained many physicians in Pakistan in the management of hepatitis and liver disease in general and with special reference to Pakistan. Our target audience is medical students, post-graduate trainees, and family physicians.
This is an educational activity based upon the blended learning concept of training and is a combination of didactic lectures, face-to-face sessions, and online assignments. For the first four years, it was run only in Karachi as a yearly recurring teaching activity, but from 2016, we have enhanced this into a Certificate course in Hepatology and extended to other cities like Lahore, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Hyderabad, and Peshawar. In 2019 inclusion of Kabul made it an international event. Unfortunately due to Corona, the program was not run in 2020.
We request you to be a part of this educational activity and invite you to deliver a talk as per the attached schedule. There will be a voluntary activity on behalf of the society for the professional development of general physicians in Pakistan. The talk may be virtual or in-person at your center. This year, we will have 3 centers-Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. We hope to have 25-30 participants at each site, who will assemble for one day /week at a venue while maintaining all SOPs for corona. The venue in Karachi will be the CIME at AKU. There will be simultaneous video-linked sessions in all the enrolled centers.
We hope that you will join us in this educational activity to further the cause of the prevention and control of liver disease in Pakistan.
