Sania Nishtar appointed Special Assistant to PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has appointed Dr Sania Nishtar, as Special Assistant on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation with the status of Federal Minister.

Dr. Sania is a renowned health expert and activist who had been working on poverty alleviation since long. She possesses impressive credentials, with broad-ranging experience in civil society, government, international development, policy and advocacy, humanitarianism and development, institution building and reform and with firsthand experience setting up institutions, fundraising and partnership building. The chairperson of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) and the Poverty Alleviation Coordination Council, Dr Nishtar served as a minister in the 2013 caretaker government. She is believed to have played an instrumental role in re-establishing the Health Ministry during her tenure.

Dr Nishtar established non-profit think tank Heartfile in 1998, an NGO that focuses on analysis and solutions to improve health systems in order to achieve universal health coverage in Pakistan and other developing countries. She was appreciated generously by the prime minister during his announcement of the ambitious Ehsas programme, a social safety and poverty alleviation programme for the welfare of the people. She was appointed co-chair to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) high-level commission on non-communicable diseases.