KARACHI: Nurses are the backbone of healthcare systems. The Government of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) is committed to establishing a nursing college in Gilgit and producing over 5,000 nurses in the next five years.

This was stated by GB Chief Minister Khalid Khurshid Khan while talking to Dr Sulaiman Shahabuddin, President of Aga Khan University (AKU) and other officials while visiting the University campus in Karachi.

“AKU’s School of Nursing and Midwifery is the first nursing institution to be affiliated with a university and a benchmark for nursing and midwifery education in Pakistan. We appreciate Chief Minister Khan’s vision for nursing education and assure him our support in this regard,” said AKU President Dr Shahabuddin.

It was mutually agreed to set up a task force, with representatives from GB government and AKU, which will recommend the way forward within a month. While visiting the campus, Chief Minister Khan expressed his keen interest in the services provided by Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) and AKU’s Centre for Innovation in Medical Education, a state-of-the-art facility for simulation-based learning for health professionals.

He announced that the GB government will work with AKUH as part of the Chief Minister Health Endowment Fund to help deserving patients from GB to receive high-quality healthcare at the Hospital.