World Halal Society on the cards

LAHORE

World Halal Society is being set up with collaboration of Pakistan and other countries, including Malaysia.

With 20 member countries, the new body’s objectives include promotion of Halal concept worldwide, harmonising the Halal standards among the member countries, marketing protocols of Halal products, training human resource and resolving the other related issues of Halal business. 

This was announced by Halal Development Council, Malaysia, former Chairman Tan Sari Dato Dr Syed Jalaludin during a function held here on Saturday.

Discussing with the Punjab Halal Development Agency (PHDA) executives, Dr Syed Jalaludin said that Pakistan was situated at the ideal geographic location and Gwadar port was an additional factor to enhance its importance in the region. He said that Pakistan might use Malaysia as gateway for its exports to ASEAN and other Far East countries.

Talking to the Malaysian delegates,PHDA Chairman Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Khan said that PHDA was thankful to the Malaysian authorities for considering PHDA for the important task. He ensued fully support to Malaysia for promoting the Halal products as way of life. 

UHS: The Regional Information Centre for Science and Technology, Shiraz, Iran, will establish its sub-office at University of Health Sciences (UHS) to gather scientific research data of the universities of Pakistan.

An agreement was signed in this regard between the two organisations at UHS on Saturday. The agreement was signed by RICeST President Dr MJ Dehghani and UHS Vice-Chancellor Maj Gen (R) Prof Muhammad Aslam.

The UHS VC said that the establishment of RICeST sub-office at UHS was an honour for the university and Pakistan.

He said that it would be a pioneering centre for gathering, processing and disseminating scientific and technical information and would benefit academic institutions, governments, funding and publishing organisations.

Under the agreement, both parties have agreed to cooperate in establishment of joint information databases and databanks to benefit the users from both countries.

UHS will collect journals of Pakistani universities and the RICeST will provide facilities to index them in their databases.

The Iranian organisation will train UHS staff besides providing UHS a two-year IP based access to its online Persian databases.

workshop: The Punjab AIDS Control Programme, Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department in collaboration with UNAIDS and UNDAP has organised a training workshop “Addressing Stigma & Discrimination in Healthcare Settings” in a local hotel.

According to a handout issued here on Saturday, it is the first such kind of training with representation from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health care providers. The meeting brought together the stakeholders, including development partners, community-based actors, NGOs, health care providers and the UN system.

Prominent among the speakers were Dr Adnan Zafar Khan, additional secretary (Admin)/project director, PACP, Dr Mamdou L Shakho, country director, UNAIDS and  Dr Aurang Zeib, national HIV officer, UNDP.

Addressing the workshop, Dr Adnan Zafar Khan, project director, Punjab AIDS Control programme, informed the participants that the high risk population faced challenges of discrimination in accessing reproductive health information and services due to their marginalised status. They are most unprivileged segment of society. The key population should not be excluded from the policy network, he added. He said the program recently got passed its new PC-1. He said that Punjab AIDS Control Programme was leading the provincial AIDS Response and providing preventive, diagnostic and treatment services.

Dr Adnan Zafar said the Punjab government was committed to providing funding for prevention and treatment of AIDS. Since 2010, the government has been funding the program from its own resources, he added. The training was segmented into two sessions.