Aga Khan University (AKU) celebrated its 10th anniversary this November in Karachi. A little more than ten years had passed since AKU was granted its Charter from the Government of Pakistan to become the first private university in a country of more than 100 million people. In this first decade, the Aga Khan University Medical Centre has been the pioneer venture of the University. Its Faculty of Health Sciences, embracing the School of Nursing and the Medical College, has been established with a commitment to high standards and innovative programmes that address the health needs of Pakistan and other developing countries. Its teaching hospital has been meeting the challenges of providing high quality service for the diverse medical needs of a vast tropical city and its surrounding nation, while also achieving financial viability.

AKU's Charter envisaged that the University would reach out beyond the health sciences to other fields and by its 10th anniversary AKU had added its recently-started Institute for Educational Development. A University concerned to address major needs of the developing and Muslim worlds could not long delay in adding education to its health commitments. The field was new to it but the Institute could be based on the long-standing engagement and experience of the Aga Khan Development Network with school management and the improvement programmes in Pakistan and other countries.

Bringing a university from conception to living reality is a demanding and absorbing undertaking, and perhaps especially so for one that chose to face the complexities of building a medical school and the provision of medical services at the outset. Only after several years of detailed planning and preparation was it possible for the rapid development of this medical centre to come about as an institution of quality, relevance and originality. Similarly, several years of study, planning and assembling of resources were needed before the Institute for Educational Development could be confidently launched.

Realisation of the original vision of the Aga Khan University has also required the commitment, understanding and support of a great many people and institutions. The University could not have come together in November for its 10th anniversary celebration without having had donors to provide its campus, contributions for its fine buildings, its endowment, equipment, books, and research, and indeed, for much of the myriad paraphernalia that serious university work and service requires.It could not have assembled for that happy occasion without the professors who have committed their energies and learning to this new university; without the successive classes of students who have braved the rigours of demanding and innovative programmes; without the doctors, nurses, and technicians who have made the teaching hospital function. It needed too the academic leaders and executives who have reliably and creatively planned its work and seen to it that all the necessary parts of a complex enterprise were in place at the right times, and that troublesome problems and crises were coped with as they arose. We should remember too the many volunteers and other workers whose often humble functions are indispensable to an institution that reliably and faithfully serves those who come to it to learn or to be helped.

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