Many proverbs and sayings from around the world advocate for unity and collaboration. When people band together, they collaborate by pooling their knowledge, power, and resources. And the results have been fantastic! Global collaboration in life science research has historically been largely successful, as evidenced by Ebola, chickenpox, and other outbreaks.
Why Should Countries Collaborate in Life Science Research?
Collaboration is an easy but effective means of attaining the end results. Two people can move a greater load than one person. Some countries may possess physical or financial resources while others may have the technical know-how. They are thus able to be much more effective together.
Global pandemics have proved just how important collaboration in life science and research is. Take for example the current severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SAR-COV-2) outbreak. Australia and Chinese researchers worked together early 2020 to establish genetic sequencing of this new virus and consequently availing the genome map to researchers and scientists across the globe.
Global collaboration in life science and research was also instrumental in containing and eliminating Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). This haemorrhagic fever thought to originate from fruit bats and affect humans and other primates broke out in Central Africa spreading to Guinea, Sierra Leone and later Liberia.
The virus with a fatality rate of 50% to 90% percent fatality spread so fast that it was impossible for any single government to contain it. International collaboration was thus required to keep the disease in check and later completely eradicate it. Countries chipped in under the United Nations World Health Organization to contain the epidemic.
But with global collaboration comes linguistic and cultural challenges.
The Need for Excellent Translational Resources
The world has roughly around 6500 different languages with 12 most spoken official languages. Global collaboration in life sciences and research brings together many countries from regions sharing certain languages such as English, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, French and even Hindi. A good example is the current race for an effective COVID-19 vaccine with clinical trials being conducted the world over.
Healthcare translation resources can greatly improve global collaboration in world science and research. Good translational resources help in sharing of information. For example, a genome mapping done in Russia will most probably be written in Russian which will have to be translated to other world languages for it to be of help to other scientists and researchers.
Translational resources go a long way in aiding research and clinical applications. The world is currently conducting clinical trials of vaccines such as the Indian Astrazeneca and the Russia’s Sputnik vaccine. Many countries are home to people of different races, cultural backgrounds and native languages. The success and effectiveness of the clinical trials lies in the ability of the recipients to communicate with trial groups.
Translational resources mediate between the medics and the local target groups with translators communicating the intent of the research to the people. They will in turn provide the researchers with information from the patients.
Cutting Edge Technology Also Require Multilingual Experts
Top of the art technological fields such as medical research use competent experts to mediate between the collaborators. There are as many organizations and medical staff as there are countries. Most of these use some among the 12 official languages.
Take the following scenario to understand this. When Coronavirus epidemic first broke out Singapore was the first to come up with testing kits and machines. These machines were then sold to the rest of the world despite the fact that Tamil, English and Malay are used in Singapore.
Bottom Line
There are many benefits that can be accrued from collaboration in life science and research such as a pool of resources and most importantly effectiveness in clinical trials and effectiveness in cutting edge technology.
