When the World Health Organization declared the end of the covid-19 emergency, researchers revived the festivities by making scientific advances that did not exist three years ago. But they also raised the challenges that exist from now on.
We learned a lot from the pandemic, measures were adopted in hospitals to take better care of ourselves. Where the tests or analyzes are carried out, there is care and sterilization. We learned that a virus can emerge and no one is exempt,” said Gabriela Dávila, regional director of Clinical Research for Europe, Canada and Latin America at the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
In interview with excelsior, the specialist explained the lessons left by the worst pandemic that humanity has faced in the last hundred years. Now, digitization and speed in processes are essential in research.
Today people know more about clinical research. Doubt and ignorance were a challenge. But the evolution of research continues to modernize. What is new is decentralization and virtuality, ”he assured.
For this reason, Dávila proposes the creation of hybrid models, with the digitization of files, virtual consultations and remote monitoring.
Medical records, electronic consent, the digital age is coming and we need institutes and researchers to understand that in the research career we must modernize in the digital age”, he stated.
This, without losing contact with patients.
On May 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the health emergency due to the covid-19 pandemic has ended.
Thanks to the fact that millions of people were vaccinated with the different modalities of vaccines that we have, we reached this global coverage that today allows us to no longer be a pandemic,” he said.
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They were months of hard work to achieve a vaccine against the virus that had paralyzed humanity in a way that had not been seen in a hundred years, to search for volunteers, he added on the occasion of the World Clinical Research Daywhich is commemorated today.
The largest sample of volunteers was especially in the United States, Argentina and Brazil.
We had a regulatory authority that delivered approvals in a matter of hours, this allowed us to move quickly,” he explained.
The American company had a center in Argentina, where there were about 400 volunteers every day.
They were people who wanted to support the task of critical research”, shared the expert, who is also part of the company’s Diversity and Inclusion leadership committee.
This hard work was key. It led us to absolute success. There were tears and there was much joy. Imagine that human wear, but in the end it gave us a lot of joy, entire countries began to be vaccinated, ”added Dávila, who describes herself as passionate about her subject.
Today, Dávila assumes that the investigation, of which she is a part, could have changed the course of her personal life:
My mother died when I was a child, she died of colon cancer, there was not what there is today. It fills my heart that today we can save so many moms with things that weren’t there 30 years ago. I wish I could have given her medicine, but she looks at me from heaven and supports me, and that for me is a passion and she has no words.”
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