Dr. Nafis Sadik of Pakistan, a pioneer in family planning and maternal and child health, passed away on Sunday in New York.
How Did Champion of women’s health and rights Nafis Sadik Die?
Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani physician who fought for women’s health and rights and was a driving force behind the ground-breaking action plan adopted by 179 nations at the 1994 U.N. population conference, passed away late Monday, according to her son. She would have turned 93 in five days.
The first mark of respect for women is support for their reproductive rights
At the Beijing women’s conference a year after Cairo, Sadik
She had been ill for a while and had been absent from New York’s diplomatic community for a while.
The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Natalia Kanem, expressed her sorrow over her death and paid her a heartfelt tribute, praising her as a fierce champion of women’s health, rights, and empowerment.
She was a fervent supporter of women’s rights, according to Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, a former permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, who also expressed her sorrow at her passing.
The arrangements for Dr. Sadik’s funeral, according to those close to her family, were being made.
She was the daughter of Mohammad Shoaib, a former vice president of the World Bank and finance minister of Pakistan who passed away in Washington in 1976. President Ayub Khan’s cabinet included Shoaib.
Nafis Sadik cause of death
According to Omar Sadik, his mother passed away on Sunday night at her New York residence due to natural causes.
Consensus was also obtained at the Cairo conference on a number of objectives, including expanding access for women to secondary and higher education and achieving universal primary education in all nations by 2015, an objective that has not yet been achieved. It also included objectives to increase access to reproductive and sexual health services, such as family planning, and to lower newborn, child, and maternal mortality.
Although the conference ended a taboo on talking about sexuality, it did not fully acknowledge that women had the freedom to decide when they have sex and when they get married.
millions of girls and young women have grown up knowing that their bodies belong to them, and that their futures are there to shap
Kanem
Who was Nafis Sadik?
After retiring from UNFPA in 2000, Dr. Sadik worked as the secretary-special general’s adviser and his envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Dr. Sadik joined UNFPA in 1971. According to the UNFPA statement, Dr. Sadik, an obstetrician-gynecologist by training, served as the Pakistan Central Family Planning Council’s director general before joining the UN.
for her significant contributions to women’s health and rights and population policies and for her tireless efforts to combat HIV/AIDS,” his spokesman said. “She consistently called attention to the importance of addressing the needs of women, and of involving women directly in making and carrying out development policy, which she believed was particularly important for population policies and programs
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, in the city of Jaunpur, was born Dr. Sadik. She was the child of Mohammad Shoaib, the finance minister in the Ayub Khan government in the 1960s, and Iffat Ara.
Nafis Sadik attended Loreto College in Kolkata and the Dow Medical College in Karachi before earning her doctorate in medicine. Her gynaecology and obstetrics internship was completed at City Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
She pursued additional education at Johns Hopkins University and worked as a physiology research fellow at Queens University in Ontario (Canada).
Nafis Sadik career
In the early years of her career, Dr. Sadik worked as a doctor in rural Pakistan, providing obstetrics and gynaecology services.
In the 1960s, she was named director general of the Central Family Planning Council by the Pakistani government.
Dr. Sadik became one of the highest-ranking women in the UN hierarchy when she was named executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 1987. She was also the first woman to serve as executive director of one of the UN’s major programmes that receives voluntary funding.
Women’s health and rights champion Nafis Sadik
Numerous international accolades and honours have been bestowed upon her for her work in advancing the health of women and children around the world.
She continued her illustrious career by offering advice and assistance to several boards of directors.
Dr. Sadik promoted the idea that it was best to address women’s health and wellbeing from a larger perspective of sexual and reproductive health, within the social and economic context of women’s life.
She had repeatedly emphasised the necessity to directly include both men and women in addressing the problems of women.
Hugh Moore Award for Nafis Sadik
She was the first woman to receive the Hugh Moore Award, which was established in 1976 and is named for a US pioneer who is credited with raising awareness of the population crisis. She received recognition for her leadership in the field of family planning as well as for inspiring other women to pursue careers in the field of population.
It is impossible to overstate the contribution Dr. Sadik made to population planning during her 14 years as executive director of UNFPA. She oversaw the largest source of multilateral funding for population planning initiatives in the entire world.
According to a UN citation, the UNFPA has possibly the greatest influence on population policy and family welfare of any organisation, partly because it speaks for all countries.
She received numerous medals and honours from throughout the world for her work in advancing the health of women and children.
Nafis Sadik major contributions to research on family planning
She claimed that her audacious leadership and vision in Cairo “put the world on an ambitious path, one that was continued at the Beijing U.N. women’s conference in 1995 and with the adoption of U.N. development goals since 2000, among which are achieving gender equality and many of the issues in the Cairo programme of action.
She belonged to the American Association of Physicians from Pakistan. She was chosen to join the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ 1988 Fellowship ad eundem in the United Kingdom.
In 1994, Dr. Sadik served as secretary general of the Cairo-based International Conference on Population and Development.
The conference, according to the reference, significantly altered population planning practises.
A shift in the international consensus that placed human rights, particularly women’s rights, at the centre of the population issue was witnessed at the conference.
Major contributions to population, family planning, and reproductive health research have been made by Nafis Sadik. She contributed to various influential publications with her writing and edited a number of significant books.
She is survived by her five children and her late husband, Azhar Sadik, who passed away several years prior.
Nafis Sadik family
The five children, 10 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren of Sadik are still alive.
Omar Sadik remarked that his mother “liked the way she lived: wide open, welcome, magnificent, generous beyond imagination, gracious, and giving – always and in all ways giving.” Even though our house wasn’t particularly large, mom always managed to make it seem as though there was plenty of room for everyone who needed a bed, a couch, a meal, or a family.
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Because everyone could see her heart, he remarked, “she transcended age and time and was as equally cherished by individuals much older than her as she was by small little children.” She was unparalleled and unsurpassed. “She fit more into one day than most of us do perhaps in one year.”
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