THE Aga Khan has inaugurated the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University, East Africa's first premier private medical school.
The $250 million health sciences campus, to be established in Nairobi, aims to provide international-standard education for doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.
It will comprise a medical college, a school of nursing and allied health programmes and will offer degrees at bachelors, masters and PhD levels.
The faculty aims to build local capacity and will enable implementation of health care services with world-class infrastructure and quality, a statement from the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) said.
Speaking at the launch, His Highness the Aga Khan, who is founder and chairman of AKDN, said: "Building on the success of its existing programmes, the Aga Khan University is planning to establish a new Faculty of Health Sciences here in Nairobi.
To my knowledge, this will be the first private sector university in Eastern Africa to create a full-fledged faculty of health sciences offering under-graduate and post-graduate degrees in medicine, nursing and the allied health sciences."
The Aga Khan was accompanied by Kenya's Education Minister, Prof. George Saitoti.
Work on the new faculty's Heart and Cancer Centre is expected to start later this year.
This $40 million initiative will replace and enhance existing facilities in surgery, obstetrics, critical care and imaging, and provide facilities for the tertiary treatment services in cardiology and cancer.
The faculty is the first social development initiative announced by the Aga Khan as part of his Golden Jubilee celebrations marking his 50 years as spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
An AKDN statement said the faculty will promote relevant high impact research, particularly in the areas of health services and epidemiology that will have an impact on influencing health policy.
The Aga Khan University was established and chartered in 1983 as an international university within AKDN, a group of private, non-denominational development agencies and institutions working together to improve living conditions and opportunities in over 30 of the poorest countries in the developing world.