ISLAMABAD: Minister for Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood Thursday underlined the need to work on conventional and substitute methods of medicine as allopathic medicine had occupied all the space in health sector.

“We should not totally rely on allopathic as many medicines are still being prepared throughout the world with the help of plants and animals whose prescriptions are thousands years old,”, the minister said while addressing an International Symposium and Global Biodiversity and Health Big Data here at COMSTECH.

He said Pakistan has a lot of potential for research in various fields that could be utilized through acquiring expertise of brotherly countries like China which also had a thousand years old history of conventional medicines.

Shafqat Mehmood said that Pakistan was among most climate change affected states and urged the youth to play an effective role in mitigating the challenge through plantation.

According to vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan his government was taking steps to make a clean and green Pakistan, he added.

Students could spread awareness in order to protect the environment, he said, adding that, there is a dire need to make the sustainable utilization of our resources for further successive generations.

He greeted the foreign scientist for their participation in the event and hoped that this conference would bring fruitful results to counter the biodiversity challenges being faced in the country.