Aga Khan University Convocation
Karachi, Pakistan, November 03, 2001

Bismillah-ir-Rehman-ir-Rahim
Honourable Chief Guest, Mr. Justice Irshad Hassan Khan
Chief Justice of Pakistan
Chairman and Members of the Board of Trustess
Members of the Faculty and Staff
Distinguished guests
Graduating Students of Aid

Let me start by congratulating the graduating students on successfully completing your courses in the Faculty of Health Sciences. We can well imagine the joy and sense of fulfillment these years of  relentless work have meant for you. You merit the credit that the fruition of your exertions has brought you, but in this moment of success and fulfillment, do remember the debt of gratitude you owe to the Institution that has nurtured you. Its stamp of excellence and the noble name it bears will always accompany you wherever you go. I know that this is a trust you shall not fail to redeem. Another source of inspiration will be the example your professors and mentors have set for you in professional excellence and in adherence to the highest standards of ethics and integrity. You will also carry with you as a constant frame of reference that methodical clinical approach, that psychological insight and focused attention they so effortlessly displayed. Above all, you will recall the rare quality of compassion - beyond the purely mechanical calls of duty - that our culture happily promotes and fosters. It is a pearl of high price and an act of grace which you must try to emulate.

You owe yet another - perhaps even greater debt - to your parents who accepted many sacrifices to provide material support for your education. They sustained you also by encouragement and moral succour when it was most needed .They never burdened you with their anxieties about your progress, your welfare and their hopes for your success, of which this day is the joyous fulfillment. Their prayers will continue to protect and sustain you in more ways than you will ever know.

We all join you in expressing joint gratitude and lasting admiration to all these silent benefactors.

The commencement of your careers as graduating students assumes special significance in this crisis ridden world as the fight against the scourge of terrorism unfolds before us, not only in our own region but right across the world. The meaning of global interconnectedness is being demonstrated in the most pervasive manner. Assisted by information technology; it touches life at all points and unleashes a chain of events the scope and scale of which is difficult to foresee.

The tragedy of September 11th is indeed a watershed in the evolution of human affairs at the threshold of the 21st century which marks also the threshold of your professional careers. Biological warfare as a weapon of terror and the Anthrax scare that has gripped the United States while it is still reeling from the cataclysm of the World Trade Centre, must surely have engaged your professional attention. Even more weighty than these events and their fall out is the invasion of consciousness by a new array of anxieties of a kind that mankind has probably never experienced at the global level.

As you so well know, psychosomatic symptoms have for many years been a part of the study of medicine, but their current dimensions are likely to grow to unprecedented proportions. Additionally, the coefficient of the unknown is so great and the general climate of angst so contagious - especially in Western societies - that it has resulted in generalized panic.

It is true that the USA is the main theatre or stage upon which this drama is being played out, but the scourge is spreading more widely in different forms. Above all, the impact of this kind of worldwide terror on the human mind and the effect of the full fledged neurosis that could accompany it, and its psycho-somatic syndromes, are subjects that will no doubt have an impact on the teaching, practice and research in the health sciences.

In an another field, the hazards and difficulties that will face us nearer home are the effects of starvation on a massive scale in Afghanistan and in expanding refugee camps which are already hotbeds of sickness and infectious disease, in addition to casualties resulting from war-time conditions that prevail in our neighbourhood.

In these sombre and fateful days, it seemed to me to be right and proper to mention some of the challenges that face us all and face your noble profession in a poignant manner. Human ingenuity has again and again proved its metal and its capacity to pursue vigorously the discovery of ante-dotes to meet future contingencies, however dire and intractable they may appear to be, because the spirit of the human species and especially of men and women such as those I have the honour to address - that spirit is surely unconquerable.

May the blessings of the Almighty, his mercy and his guidance be your constant companions.