Graduate and postgraduate educational challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic period: its impact and innovations-a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has transformed the global view of education, including graduate and postgraduate education making the development of an alternative approach in times of social isolation an academic imperative. The present review aims to investigate the challenges experienced among undergraduate and postgraduate education and the strategies adopted to address these challenges during the pandemic. METHOD: The preferred reporting items for the systematic review and meta-analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) were followed. The aim was to include journal articles published in the English language that discussed the influence of the pandemic on educational processes and applied innovative approaches as a solution to educational challenges. From January to August 2020, PubMed, EMBASE, and Google Scholar were searched for articles, yielding 10,019 articles. Two groups of authors examined the retrieved articles separately to avoid any risk of bias. The title and abstract of the articles were used for scrutiny, followed by full-text screening based on the established inclusion and exclusion criteria. The facts and findings of the studies were also discussed based on per capita income, literacy rate, and Internet accessibility. RESULTS: Thirty of the obtained articles were included in the study. The selected articles were from North and South/Latin America, Asia & Pacific, South Africa, and Europe regions. Nineteen of the selected articles dealt with undergraduate education, ten with postgraduate, and one with both groups. The affordability of digital devices and the availability of Internet services were the major challenges for low- and middle-income economies. The ZOOM platform has been adopted by more than 90% of the education systems. CONCLUSION: Means of communication, including visual media, digitized content, and other web-based platforms, have been recognized as efficient learning and training tools, but have not been fully accessible for mass application and use due to the lack of availability of resources, their cost, and insufficient training among the users. In light of this review, it is suggested that harmonized and collaborative efforts should be made to develop cost-effective and user-friendly tools to overcome the current challenges and prevent future educational crises. SYSTEMIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: The review was not registered.

Pharmaceutical quality evaluation of different glimepiride brands marketed in Karachi (Pakistan): In pursuance to global issue of availability and affordability of quality medicines.

Availability of economical quality medicines is always required for chronic disease management. Price differences among multiple brands of a product do not essentially displays low quality for the more affordable brand, however in a few occurrences it appears. Glimepiride, an oral anti-diabetic drug, is produced by several national and multinational industries in Pakistan with considerable cost variation. The study aimed to evaluate the quality and economy of various Glimepiride brands available in Karachi, specifically of public sector hospitals. For this, eight glimepiride brands were collected and analyzed for the pharmaceutical quality using physical parameters, disintegration test, dissolution profile, spectrophotometric assay and content uniformity. Pharmacoeconomic assessment was also carried out such as availability, affordability and price variation. A profound discrepancy was observed among the prices of selected brands. All of the products found to be equivalent to the reference product except G5, the most inexpensive and highest consumed product of a public sector hospital. Study concludes that products with higher quality and lesser price can be used as a substitute to the costly brands while availability of a substandard product looks for consideration of pertinent authorities to assure the distribution of quality medicines.