757 UVAS students awarded degrees

LAHORE
As many as 757 graduates of University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) were awarded degrees in the varsity’s 7th convocation held on Monday.
Chancellor/Governor Malik Muhammad Rafique Rajwana presided over the convocation in which 163 graduates were conferred DVMs, 173 BS (Hons), 64 Pharm-D, 21 MBA, 12 MBA (Executive), 12 MBF, 16 BBA (Hons), 28 MSc Zoology, 246 MPhil and 22 PhDs degrees. Also 38 position-winning graduates were awarded medals.
The governor while congratulating the graduating students said it was now their responsibility to pay back to society and contribute to the nation building and development. He lauded the progress achieved by the UVAS and positioned itself among top 10 universities of Pakistan.
Governor Rafique Rajwana also said the world was fast changing than ever, so we all needed to think critically, be intellectually responsive and prone to creativity. He asked the university to enhance its role as a major support institution for the development of local innovation in livestock and allied sectors and provide skilled human resources. He said: “We need to be prepared to respond to animal disease incursion in a timely and cost-effective way and to have up-to-date policies and response structures in place to achieve this”.
The governor said development of livestock was government’s priority and made it clear that there would be no compromise on quality of education. He sought help from media and society to achieve this goal.
Earlier, the governor along with the VC gave away degrees to PhD scholars and medals to the position-winning graduates.
Presenting the welcome address, Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha spoke about the academics, research, development, extension programmes and community services of the university. He said the UVAS had fast moved towards a multi-level education and skill-development institution by using knowledge, resources and skills for human

resource development.
He said the UVAS has emerged as a hub of professional advancement in wide-ranging areas including veterinary and animal sciences, animal production and technology, biotechnology, microbiology, pharmaceutical sciences, food and nutrition sciences, environmental sciences, zoology, economics and business management. He said that the university has so far produced 138 PhDs, 1,795 MPhils and Masters and 4,866 bachelor graduates.
malnutrition: Participants in a two-day “Community Management on Acute Malnutrition” (CMAM) National Review, while expressing satisfaction at the pace and the outputs of the programme, called for continuously more effective and efficient network to reach out to malnourished children of 6-59 months of age, pregnant and nursing women in the rural areas of the country.
The workshop was jointly organised by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) here at a local hotel on Monday. Such reviews generally take place every year in order to assess the overall performance of the programme and come up with collective recommendations. The workshop was attended by representatives from the federal government, all provincial and regional governments, WFP, UNICEF, WHO, international and local NGOs, health professionals and members of the civil society.
The UNICEF representative in Pakistan, Angela Kearney, said that the review provided a good opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences collectively.
“I believe that sharing good practices and coming up with recommendations on the way forward, considering various challenges faced in past, can help us go a long way in addressing malnutrition” she said.
Addressing the participants, member of the Planning Commission, Dr Mubarak Ali, appreciated the efforts with regards to the implementation of the CMAM programme and emphasised that community mobilisation was key to improvement of the nutrition situation in the country. WFP Pakistan representative, Lola Castro, said the “overall objective of the workshop was a collective overview of the nutrition intervention in order to learn from experiences of all the stakeholders at national and provincial levels and agree on a joint action plan.