KARACHI: A five-year project aimed at improving maternal, child and adolescent health in Pakistan was launched at the Aga Khan University (AKU) on Thursday.

Under the $25 million project titled Umeed-i-Nau (new hope) funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the AKU will work with public-sector primary care providers to improve quality ofcarein the ruralareas ofBalochistan, southern Punjab and Sindh as well as urban slums in Karachi.

The districts include Badin, Dadu, Hyderabad/Matiari, Karachi, Jaffarabad, Jamshoro, Lasbela, Mirpurkhas, Muzaffargarh, Nasirabad, Qambar Shahdadkot, Rahim Yar Khan, Sanghar and Thatta.

The project also includes a groundbreaking effort to provide health education through schools for adolescent girls in Pakistan.

`The federal and provincial governments, public and private institutions,civil society and every one of us have to team up to meet the United Nations` 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030,` said Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta, founding director of the AKU Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health.

Projects like Umeed-i-Nau, he said, could help Pakistan achieve Goal 3 for health, which also required additional investments for improving nutrition, keeping children in schools and addressing environmental health and gender equity.

The project will operate through a new research centre, the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, which will be established through a generous gift of Rs2bn from the Hashoo Foundation.

`The project will test a variety of approaches in an effort to develop insights and evidence that can influence policy across the country and beyond its borders,` professor Bhutta said, adding that it would help reduce stillbirths and newborn deaths by 20pc as well as deaths from pneumonia and diarrhoea by 30pc.