In the news

Heritage connoisseurs for years have rued that although India has an unbroken history of 10,000 years and is home to 28 UNESCO world heritage sites there are no world-class interpretation centres at any of these sites. Humayun's Tomb, situated in a dense ensemble of medieval Islamic buildings, could, according to a study commissioned by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, attract over five times its current number of visitors over a 10-year period. More than a million visit this world heritage site annually.

Aga Khan University has announced the launch of the Centre for Innovation in Medical Education with state-of-the-art resources for national and regional medical education. The foundation ceremony was celebrated on the building’s site on AKU’s Stadium Road campus.

In an effort to promote national unity prior to the General Election, a section of Kenyan children will be involved in a Read Aloud Day. “The extract from the book is about children from different communities who realise the only way to save their land from conflict over a dried up well is by getting the different communities to work together,” said the books’ author Muthoni Garand yesterday at a press briefing at Alliance Francias.

A seven-member delegation from the international and private Aga Khan University’s (AKU) campuses in Karachi , Pakistan and Nairobi, Kenya visited Sweden on 9–11 June 2011. The visits were part of planning for a new Centre of Excellence in Neonatal-Maternal-Child Health (NMCH) at AKU. The delegation wanted to learn how KI and Uppsala University have organized the continuum of Reproductive Health and MCH programs from the academic point of view.

“Healthcare is changing in Pakistan as much as anywhere in the world,” commented Professor Valerie Wass, Head of the School of Medicine at Keele University in the United Kingdom, while speaking at the concluding session of the Association for Excellence in Medical Education (AEME) and 16th Aga Khan University (AKU) symposium titled ‘education for service and patient safety in health professions’ held at the AKU on Sunday.

The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), the first rural support programme in Pakistan, was founded in 1982 by Shoaib Sultan. Shandana Khan, the Chief Executive officer of the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN), says that while the Rural Support Programmes have done their spadework in Pakistan, their efforts need to be scaled up. "We need to see greater political commitment...We work at the micro level and that limits the difference you can make. If we had the resources we could really make a difference.

The Aga Khan Health Services in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has launched a two year project which aims at improving maternal health in the country. The project, known as the Joining Hand Intiative (JHI) is being implemented in five regions of Mwanza, Iringa, Mbeya, Dodoma and Morogoro and will involve improvement of skills to nurses.

Roshan, Afghanistan's leading total communications provider, today announced that the company has been awarded the highest quality recognition of ISO 9001:2008 for its technology, network and sales operations.

The University of Central Asia’s (UCA) Senior Research Fellow and Cornell University Professor Karim-Aly Kassam was elected Foreign Member (Academician) of the Academy of Sciences, Republic of Tajikistan. Dr Kassam was also appointed English Language Editor of the Academy’s Journal of the Biological and Medical Sciences. He is no stranger to Central Asia and its academic institutions.

Outgoing Resident Representative of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in Tajikistan Munir Merali met here today with Shukurjon Zuhurov, Chairman of the Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament), at the end of his tenure to Tajikistan, Muhammadato Sultonov, a spokesman for the Majlisi Namoyandagon.