Health and Sustainable Development Goals for Pakistan

Description

Pakistan was one of the countries that did not achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals. At the conclusion of the Millennium Development Goals, all the countries of the world signed up to the 17 new global Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015. These goals encompass many elements of the previous MDGs but are far more ambitious and while many of the SDG goals are relevant to health, health per se is only one of the 17 goals. Pakistan has embarked on the mission to attain these goals by 2030 and we anticipate that a major contribution towards these goals would come from the science, academia and public health communities.

While no publication or plan can ever replace sound implementation, the thoughts and scholarship reflected in these pages set the scene for the hard work and struggle ahead for Pakistan to take an integrated and sustainable approach to achieve the goals.

Editors Biography

Prof. Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is the Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health and the Founding Director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, at the Aga Khan University, unique joint appointments. He also holds adjunct professorships at several leading Universities globally. Prof. Bhutta has been a member and led many global advisory committees including the high-level UN Health and Human Rights committee, executive committee of Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) and Independent Expert Group producing the Global Nutrition Reports since 2014.

Prof Bhutta was educated at the University of Peshawar (MBBS) and obtained his PhD from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh & London), the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (London), American Academy of Pediatrics and the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. He heads large research teams in Pakistan and Canada working on issues of maternal, newborn and child survival and nutrition globally and regionally.

Prof. Bhutta is on several international editorial advisory boards including the Lancet, BMJ, PLoS Medicine, PLoS ONE, BMC Public Health and co-Chair of the Campbell Nutrition group. He has published 8 books, 88 book chapters, and over 890 indexed publications to date. He is a recipient of several national and international awards including Tamgha-i-Imtiaz and Pride of Performance Award by the President of Pakistan, BMJ Award for Outstanding contributions to South Asia, American Academy of Pediatrics Sam Fomon Award for lifetime contributions to Nutrition Research, the WHO Ihsan Dogramaci Family Health award and the World Academy of Sciences Award in Medical Sciences. In 2018, Prof. Bhutta was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the highest scientific and academic body in the USA.

Dr. Jai K. Das works as an Assistant Professor for the Division of Women and Child Health and is the Section Head of the Section of Public Health and Epidemiology at the Aga Khan University, Karachi. He holds a bachelor’s in medicine and has done his residency in Pediatric surgery and then completed his masters. He is currently pursuing his PhD in population and public health. As a part of the Maternal Child Health team, he has been actively involved in research including community-based trials, qualitative, mixed methods research and evidence based systematic reviews.