Better health through partnership in higher education and bilateral student mobility: collaboration between Pakistan and Norway

Project goals primarily focus on enhancing global health education in Pakistan and Norway.

Pakistan is world's sixth-most-populous country and hosts one of the largest young populations. There is a rising demand for higher education, and to meet the demand government has put efforts towards improving the institutions of higher learning in public sector and promoted the role of private sectorin higher education. 

We expect bilateral mobility of 48 students and 11 staff through following goals:

1. Develop theoretical skills to understand challenges of global health.
2. Develop relevant practical competencies for finding solutions to global health challenges. 
3. Gender equality in health.

These activities will provide Norwegian students with excellent opportunities to experience systems for delivery of health care, management of chronic and infectious diseases and barriers in disease prevention.We expect these students to translate this experience in novel solutions for these grand global health challenges. Similarly, students from Pakistan will gain experience in operations of health care systems and on their return will be able to help build capacity for smooth running of these systems.

Using proficiencies of collaborating institutes in Norway and Pakistan, we will build a robust program for training of global health professionals.

Partners

• Lahore University of Management Sciences, School of Science and Engineering.
• Institute of Public Health-Lahore
• Institute of Public Health-Quetta
• Interactive Research and Development
• Social and Health Inequalities Network (SHINe)
• Ghulab Devi Chest Hospital, Gulab Devi Educational Complex

Exchange in 2024:

Student exchange to CIH:
Masters and Ph.D. students visiting CIH from Lahore University of Management sciences and Gulab Devi Hospital and Education Complex, Pakistan, in spring 2024: 

• PhD student Mirza Ameer Faizan Ali
• PhD student Zunaira Rao

• Master student Asir Malik
• Master student Fatima Nasir
• Master student Subayyal Iftikhar
• Master student Syed Mazhar

Staff exchange to LUMS, Pakistan:
Professors Tehmina Mustafa and Bente E. Moen from CIH visited Lahore in Pakistan in March 2024. They were guests at LUMS (Lahore University of Managment Sciences) and visited also a company - Packages - both in Lahore and Bullah Shah, to study issues related to occupational health. 

In addition, Tuberculosis was discussed, as the main interest for Mustafa, and they visited Gulab Devi Hospital and studied the good systems they had there for the diagnostic procedures.

Photo:

B. E. Moen

Exchange in 2023:

Four Master's degree students from IPH, Lahore, Pakistan visited University of Bergen, Centre for International Health in 2023:
•    Adil Majeed and Ali Raza from IPH, Lahore.
•    Irum Ismail and Sabina Baloch from IPH, Quetta.

One MASTER STUDENT Rajeshwar visited Pakistan in 2023.

Three medical students visited Pakistan.

Two faculty members, Shaper Mirza from Lahore University of management Sciences, and Atiqa Ambreen from Gulab Devi Educational Complex visited Centre for International Health, UiB.