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A two weeks course at Aga Khan University (AKU) trained 43 health professionals in skills necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in health and reproductive health sectors. The Department of Community Health Sciences (CHS) organised the course titled “Sensitisation on Millennium Development Goals: Poverty Reduction Strategies, Reproductive Health and Health Sector Reform.” Funded by David & Lucile Packard Foundation and UNFPA, the course was offered in collaboration with Ministries of Health and Population Welfare. Technical support was provided by the World Bank Institute Washington DC.

Targeting mid level managers, policy makers, public health professionals, advocates and activists, both from public and private sectors, the course highlighted the pre-requisites and imperatives to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Pakistan through health sector reforms and poverty reduction strategies. Speakers from government and private sector deliberated on several concepts including health systems, inequalities in health, service delivery gaps, problems in resource allocation and priority setting, and key RH issues in Pakistan. Participants representing Ministries of Health, Population Welfare, Planning and Development, and Economic Affairs as well as academia and NGOs undertook concerted action planning. The course concluded with a comprehensive plenary discussion on “Can Pakistan achieve MDGs targets?”

The programme trained participants to recognise how changing international and national policy environments affect their work in population and reproductive health and identify linkages among health, gender and poverty. A key element was to impart skills to the participants that would help them explore and deal with the obstacles in implementing sustainable population and health care policies. Identification of technical, political and economic issues in achieving the health and gender MDGs was another important area of training. The primary mission of AKU is the development of quality human resources that are trained to respond to the unique needs of the developing world.

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