Sania Nishtar

Dr. Sania Nishtar
250px Dr. Sania Nistar at the 2012 World Economic Forum
Born	(1963-02-16) 16 February 1963
Citizenship	Pakistan
Nationality	Pakistani
Fields	Health and governance
Institutions	Heartfile World Health Organization (WHO) Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom Ministry of Science and Technology Ministry of Education and Training
Alma mater	Khyber Medical College King's College London Royal College of Physicians of London
Known for	Work in development of health in Pakistan
Notable awards	Sitara-e-Imtiaz (2005) Global Innovation Award (2011)
Spouse	Ghalib Nishtar
Website www.sanianishtar.info

Sania Nishtar (Urdu: ثانیہ نشتر ‎) (Born: 16 February 1963); SI, FRCP), is a Pakistani, Former Federal Minister of Education & Training, Science and Technology, Information Technology and Health, Physician cardiologist, author, health science writer, science administrator, thinker, peace builder, key health policy voice, prominent Pakistani woman, member of advisory groups and boards, Founder and President of NGO think tank Heartfile, Heartfile Health Financing and Pakistan Health Policy Forum. She is co-chair of the WHO Ending Childhood Obesity Commission and Chair of the UN Secretary General’s Independent Accountability Panel on Every Woman Every Child. Sania Nishtar is Pakistan’s official candidate for Director General, World Health Organization. In 2015 Sania Nishtar was the Government of Pakistan’s official candidate to the position as new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Education

Sania Nishtar graduated from Khyber Medical College in 1986 and was Best Graduate of the Year. She holds a Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and a PhD from King's College London.

Founder of institutions

After several years as a Cardiologist at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Sania Nishtar founded Heartfile in 1999, which has grown from a health information-focused NGO to a health policy think tank, focused on health systems issues.

In 2007, she founded Heartfile Health Financing, a program to protect poor patients from medical impoverishment. The program is a 2008, 2012, and 2013 Commitment of the Clinton Global Initiative. She also founded Pakistan's Health Policy Forum, a civil society policy platform for health experts that has garnered contributions from prominent global health advocates including Seth Berkley, Sir George Alleyne, Mark Dybul, and Naresh Trehan, in addition to many others.

Health and governance advocate

Sania Nishtar's domestic focus is on health sector governance. This was illustrated recently in the case of her stance on a spurious drug scandal, abolition of the Ministry of Health, which was part of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, and the country's inability to eradicate polio. She also contributes time as a volunteer to health systems strengthening in her country and has signed two MoUs with Pakistan's Ministry of Health, committing her time pro bono. She authored Pakistan's first compendium of health statistics, and the country's first national public health plan for non-communicable diseases. Nishtar's book Choked Pipes, an analysis of Pakistan's health systems, became the blue print for the country's health policy. She is a member of many health initiatives in Pakistan. Through her writings she has become a proponent of governance reforms in Pakistan, and is a member of many national and international boards and initiatives, which aim to improve governance in the country, including the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. She was a member of the Asia Society Task Force on Pakistan 2020, and was formerly a director of IESCO. She has recently been appointed by Pakistan Federal Minister Ishaq Dar, as a member of Pakistan's Economic Advisory Council.

Tenure as Minister

Sania Nishtar served as Federal Minister in the Government of Pakistan during the 2013 caretaker government as Minister for Science and Technology, Education and Trainings and Information Technology and Telcom. She also had responsibility as focal person for health. During her term, she was instrumental in establishing Pakistan's Ministry of Health, which she had been advocating for. At the conclusion of her term she published Handover Papers, voluntarily submitting herself for accountability, a gesture which garnered both national and international media attention. She also refused pay and perks and left an unusual gift for government functionaries. Her policies remained focused on promoting development; in the education sector linking academia with entrepreneurs, industry and the national priorities, and in the Ministry of IT by using the telecom sector for development. During her term in office as minister, she prevailed upon the Prime Minister to reverse the decision to dismantle the Prime Minister's Polio cell, and saved the government from what could have been an e-voting embarrassment.

Peace-builder

Sania Nishtar is the Chair of the Health Committee of the Aman ki Asha initiative, a campaign for peace between India and Pakistan, for which she has convened several meetings and negotiated declarations. As a member of the Pakistan Chapter of the Partners for a New Beginning, Aspen Institute, and a member of the Global Advisory Council of the Pakistan American Foundation and the US-Muslim Engagement Initiative she has been advocating for broader US-Pakistan engagement, towards improving social outcomes.

Role in Global Health

Sania Nishtar has been involved with many international agencies in various capacities. She has served as temporary advisor to the World Health Organization, on more than 20 occasions and is a board member of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, and is co-chair of the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity. She is currently a Board member for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and previously served as chair of their Evaluation Advisory Committee. She is also a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum since its inception, and currently is a Trustee member of the Health Global Challenge initiative, as well as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. She is also a member of the Lancet and Rockefeller Foundation Commission on Planetary Health and the Lancet and Harvard Commission on Pain and Palliative Care. In addition, Sania Nishtar is member of the Steering Committee of the Emerging Markets Symposium, which is an initiative of the Green Templeton College, Oxford University. She is also a member of the Board of the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health.

Sania Nishtar also previously served on the Boards of the International Union for Health Promotion and the World Heart Federation (WHF) and has chaired WHF's Foundations Advisory Board from 2003 to 2006. She chaired the World Heart Day campaign in its founding years, the 'Go Red for Women' campaign in 2004, and the Expert Panel on Women and Heart Disease 2007 onwards. She also previously served as member of the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health, and was a member of the Working Group on Private Sector in Health Systems set up by Results for Development and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Sania Nishtar has been involved in several global health declarations. She was a member of the drafting committee of the Moscow Declaration on NCDs in 2011. She chaired the drafting committee of WHO's Venice Statement on Global Health Initiatives and Health Systems in 2009. She was also a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Osaka Declaration and Victoria Declaration on Cardiovascular Diseases.

Sania Nishtar is a regular plenary speaker or keynote speaker at international meetings, and speaks at forums such as Davos. She has also been invited as a thought leader at UN agencies.

She is on the international advisory board of The Lancet Global Health and is on the editorial boards of Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal and Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice. Sania Nishtar has also been on the organising committees of many international conferences.

Publications

Sania Nishtar's book Choked Pipes was published by the Oxford University Press in 2010. The book received reviews in The Lancet, and the WHO Bulletin and other periodicals, and was released in several cities. She has also authored the book Chapters, and is a regular Oped contributor in The News International, Huffington Post and has also contributed in the Wall Street Journal and Project Syndicate. She was also editor of the Pakistan Lancet Series, released in 2013.

A list of scientific publications appears below:

Books and book chapters

• Nishtar S. Pakistan: potential to achieve universal coverage for health. Attaining Universal Health Coverage – A research initiative to support evidence-based advocacy and policy-making. EGEA 2010.
• Nishtar S. Health Indicators of Pakistan. Gateway Paper II. Heartfile, Pakistan’s Health Policy Forum, Federal Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Health; 2006.
• Nishtar S. The Gateway Paper: Reforming Health Systems in Pakistan – a Strategic View. Heartfile and Pakistan’s Health Policy Forum; 2005.
• Nishtar S. The National Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases and Health Promotion in Pakistan. Heartfile 2004.
• Nishtar S. Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease in South Asia. Heartfile and SAARC Cardiac Society. ISBN 969-8651-00-4. Islamabad, Pakistan.
• Nishtar S. Public-Private Partnerships in the health sector – a call to action. The Commonwealth Health Ministers Book; 2007.

Scientific publications

• Nishtar S, Khalid F, Ikram A, et al. Protecting the poor against health impoverishment in Pakistan: proof of concept of the potential within innovative web and mobile phone technologies. Background Paper to the World Health Report, 2010, Health Systems.
• Nishtar S. Pakistan, Politics and Polio. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2010.

Awards

Nishtar is the recipient of Pakistan's Sitara e-Imtiaz, a presidential award, the European Societies Population Science Award, and the First Global Innovation Award by the Rockefeller Foundation. She was admitted to the Medical Mission Hall of Fame in Toledo, Ohio in 2011.

In the beginning of 2014, she was mentioned in the Top-20 List of 'Most Influential Women in Science in the Islamic World' by the Muslim Scientists List in recognition of her policy advocacy contributions.

Media

Sania Nishtar has been frequently quoted in the press in relation to health issues relevant to Pakistan and global health issues, particularly Polio eradication, Non-Communicable diseases, and health systems. She has been profiled in many publications as a health advocate, minister, and prominent woman in the world.

Rockhopper TV has made a documentary about one aspect of Sania Nishtar’s work, which involves building systems for change. The Documentary has been named after her book, Choked Pipes and has had previews at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. It will be released later in 2016.

External links

• Official website
• NGO thinktank, Heartfile
• Heartfile Health Financing
• Articles and columns by Sania Nishtar on The News International
• Articles by Sania Nishtar on The Huffington Post
• Media coverage of Sania Nishtar in Asian Scientist (magazine)
• Education minister’s noble precedent: refuses pay and perks
• Tremendous improvements in educational institutions
• Sania emphasises paradigm shift to market-based research
• Nishtar lauds HEC’s efforts and accomplishments
• Research & development is imperative to determine our future line of action: Sania Nishtar

Government offices
Preceded by Mr. Makhdoom Shahabuddin	Government Focal Person for Health/Federal Minister 6 April 2013 – 5 June 2013	Succeeded by Incumbent Ms. Saira Afzal Tarar
Preceded by Mr. Sheikh Waqas Akram	Federal Minister for Education and Training 6 April 2013 – 5 June 2013	Succeeded by Incumbent Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman
Preceded by Mr. Changez Khan Jamali	Federal Minister for Science and Technology 6 April 2013 – 5 June 2013	Succeeded by Incumbent Mr. Zahid Hamid
Preceded by Mr. Raja Pervaiz Ashraf	Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecom 6 April 2013 – 5 June 2013	Succeeded by Incumbent Ms. Anusha Rahman Ahmad Khan