Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, chairman of Grameen Healthcare Trust, and Vice President of Emory University Dr Gary Hauk, sign an MoU in the city yesterday to set up a learning centre in Bangladesh to provide the healthcare professionals with world-class training. Photo: Courtesy

Grameen Healthcare and Emory University of the USA have signed an MoU to set up a learning centre to train healthcare professionals in Bangladesh.

The centre will organise diploma or degree education programmes in Dhaka for physicians, nurses and healthcare administrators and will serve as a centre for strategic planning and research.

Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, chairman of Grameen Healthcare Trust, and Dr Gary Hauk, vice president of Atlanta-based Emory, and signed the deal.

Emory and Grameen will work together to work on development, translation and adaptation of relevant teaching material, according to a statement released yesterday.

Hauk is leading a 10-member delegation from Emory. Other important delegations from several North American universities, international medical institutes, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals will be visiting Grameen in Dhaka until October 23.

Grameen is working with these partners to build up the existing Grameen Kalyan rural clinics network into an affordable primary health care services system within the reach of even the poorest, according to the statement.

Grameen Healthcare has organised a series of high-level meetings in Dhaka this week in preparation for the launch of the major Grameen Healthcare initiative.

Besides Emory, representatives from McGill and Duke Universities, Pfizer, General Electric Healthcare Systems, Mayo Clinic, Sabin Vaccine Institute and Johnson & Johnson are among those attending the meetings.

At the apex level, Grameen Healthcare will set up a world class University of Health Sciences and Technology and a series of nursing colleges.

Information technology will play a key catalytic role in Grameen's integrated healthcare system for which it partnered General Electric Healthcare Systems and Intel Corporation in the design of such a system.