Jamaludin Elis, country CEO of Chulia Life Sciences Sdn Bhd, discusses the diverse activities of Chulia Group’s various subsidiaries, as well as the group’s upcoming projects in the healthcare industry. He also offers insight into Malaysia’s first medical device innovation park.   Can you present the different healthcare businesses under the Chulia Group, including Chulia Pharmaceuticals? Chulia Life Sciences Sdn Bhd (CLSSB) is the main holding company focusing on the healthcare industry, including Chulia Pharma Sdn Bhd (CPSB), Chulia Medical Solutions (CMSSB) and Chulia Biomedical Engineering Sdn Bhd (CBESB). CPSB is principally engaged in the manufacturing, distribution, import, and export of generic pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, and consumer products. CMSSB handles non-pharma related support services for the company’s clients such as logistics, supply chain, and medical device sourcing and maintenance. Lastly, CBESB is aiming to establish and operate the first medical device refurbishment and innovation park in Southern Asia. Chulia Facilities Management (CFMSB), our parent company, operates in healthcare facility maintenance. CFMSB offers air quality, facility cleaning, waste management, and biomedical engineering maintenance solutions. Chulia Group is the partner of choice for healthcare institutions as a single company providing end to end support services. We manage equipment, facilities, and the delivery of consumables to our clients all within one organization. Currently, Chulia Pharma is a key healthcare driver of the group. We are supplying to the Malaysia government and have been approved to provide 16 products to the public sector. Looking at specific therapeutic areas, CPSB’s mission is to lower the cost of pharmaceuticals and bring market access to the most innovative treatments.   How is Chulia Pharmaceuticals currently developing within the Malaysian market? CPSB was incorporated with the intention of operating in the generic pharmaceutical industry. However, we see ourselves not as a normal, commodity generics provider, but more as a high-end, branded generics company focusing on the most recent off-patent drugs. Eventually, we would like to see ourselves as an innovative company as well. We are also interested in herbal areas – creating prescription drugs using herbal materials. This is an area from which several successful prescription drugs have emerged. For example, statins, the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors cholesterol lowering agents are from red yeast rice, also the drug the drug that is used to treat Malaria are derived from molecules extracted from certain tree barks. Somewhere in the spectrum of pharmaceuticals, there is a need to look back into natural resources and convert them into drugs that heal rather than being only segmented as supplements. Another area CSPB is looking into is Halal and biosimilar vaccines. With one of our partners in Singapore, we are one of the only companies in the world that have registered a real 100 percent halal vaccine. Indeed, our partners had researched and released the first fully halal vaccine for Human Influenza Type B (HiB). It will be followed by another three vaccines currently in the pipeline. One will complete its Phase III clinical trial this September. The next will enter Phase III next June and the last will complete its Phase II trial in the first quarter of next year.   How do you assess the current status of the healthcare system of Malaysia?

Malaysia has a very high rate of lifestyle disease"