Shehri Tv

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi (Pakistan News & Features Services) The students, teachers, engineers and experts from different walks of life gathered to design cost-effective and locally-relevant solutions to enhance the ability of schools to manage natural and man-made disasters, during a three-day hackathon at Aga Khan University’s Institute for Educational Development.  The participants at the event noted that the rare nature of emergencies such as fires, floods and other safety hazards meant that public and private sector schools were unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with such crises.  Unfortunately, such one-off events can have a disproportionate, and often catastrophic, impact on a school’s operations and stakeholders. That’s why emergency response trainings, safety drills and other means of ensuring emergency preparedness need to be a regular part of a school’s strategic planning and processes, the speakers pointed out.  The experts added that m...

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi (Pakistan News & Features Services) The Aga Khan University’s Centre for Innovation in Medical Education (CIME) has become South Asia’s first simulation-based educational institution to be accredited by the US-based Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSIH).  The University’s CIME was judged to meet the highest standards in simulation-based education by the SSIH which has accredited over 170 centres in 19 countries around the world. The accreditation means that CIME will join a global community of practice bringing the latest advances in the field to Pakistan.  The simulation-based education represents a significant advance on traditional classroom and theory-based instruction.  Designed to be an immersive ‘real world’ experience, simulation, in the field of healthcare, enables medical and nursing trainees and professionals to practice key skills and techniques, using virtual reality and high-fidelity patient mannequins, in...

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi (Pakistan News & Features Services) Dietary practices are a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes in Pakistan because health practitioners have difficulty translating international recommendations according to local diet. In the absence of any national data on dietary consumption, health practitioners are unaware of what people are consuming.  There is a need for an operational policy and an action plan to promote healthy eating and active lifestyle, the speakers noted at the First Cardiovascular Conference ‘Pulse 2020’ held at Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi.  Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death in Pakistan, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017, and the country has committed to reducing the burden of such diseases by a third by 2030 under goal 3 of the sustainable development goals.  The experts at the three-day conference stressed that the epidemic poses many chal...