Bangladesh-Japan Collaboration on Biomedical Engineering
On his first day in Tokyo after the Social Business Forum Asia which took place in Fukuoka on 21-22 July, on July 24 Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus delivered a keynote address to the top management and executives of Nomura Securities, the largest securities companies in Japan, where more than US$ 20 billion of assets are traded each day.
As the leading securities and investment banking company in Japan, Nomura Securities provides individual investors and corporate clients with a broad range of services, including investment advisory services and securities underwriting. Professor Yunus explained his concept of social business, non dividend companies dedicated to solve social problems, and urged Nomura Securities to dedicate earnings of their company for one day, to invest in social business.
Later in the day, Professor Yunus visited Waseda University TWins which is a collaboration between Waseda University and Tokyo Women's Medical University focussed on biomedical engineering. TWins is involved in pioneering cardiac bypass surgery using simulators as a way for young surgeons to train. There are currently 1600 cardiac surgeons in Japan, and about 14,000 cases of bypass surgery in Japan each year.The result is that each surgeon only has opportunity of performing 10 bypass surgeries each year, with young surgeons having to wait as long as 10 years to actually get the first opportunity to do an operation. TWins has pioneered a simulating machine for bypass surgery, which enables young surgeons to get practice of doing bypass surgery on a simulated beating heart. The TWins centre is also doing pioneering work on the treatment of brain aneursyms using CT imaging and biomedical engineering techniques, testing durability of cardiac stents, also on artificial hearts.
A team comprised of Dr. Young Kwang Park, Founder and CEO of EBM Corporation, Twins Chairman Prof Mitsuo Umezo specialist on artificial heart and simulator, Prof Kiyotaa Iwasaki, Regenerative Medicine Specialist at Waseda University and Dr Takanobu Yagi, Specialist on Brain aneurysm and hydrodynamics and Dr Hiroyuki Tsukui, cardiac surgeon at Tokyo Women's Medical University met with Professor Yunus to discuss possibilities of collaborating in social business in Bangladesh.
The team plans to visit Bangladesh in October to learn more about social business and to find opportunities to offer surgical training for Bangladeshi cardiac specialists as a first step of collaboration between Japan and Bangladesh in this area, and also initiate an exchange program for Bangladesh cardiac surgeons to come to Japan for training and exposure.
In the evening, Professor Yunus addressed a keynote address at an event called Peaceful Night at Showa University, a 100 year old Japanese university for women, which was followed by a panel discussion on ways that social business can help the Tohoku region of Japan, which remains devastated even after more than one year of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake. At the event Professor Yunus' daughter and noted soprano Monica Yunus performed three songs.
Professor Yunus is in Japan from 19-26 July to attend the Social Business Forum Asia and other social business events in Fukuoka and Tokyo.
