In Search of Medical Advice

Karim Aga Khan '59, spiritual leader of more than 14 million Ismaili Muslims and a prominent international philanthropist, is building a modern teaching hospital in Pakistan, and he wants some advice from his alma mater on how to go about it.

Already under construction, the $300 million, 721-bed Aga Khan Hospital and Medical College is scheduled for completion in 1984. The Aga Khan will meet with President Bok and Harvard Medical School officials on Wednesday to sign an agreement under which Med School professors would help develop curricula, research plans and teaching methods that reflect health problems in Pakistan.

"The whole idea is geared toward what the Harvard Medical School can do to help put together a program in a developing country," Mitchell W. Spellman, dean of Medical Services, said this week.

No specific arrangements--financial or otherwise--have yet been agreed upon, said Spellman, who has coordinated preliminary negotiations with the Aga Khan Foundation.

A spokesman for the Aga Khan's family said that the philanthropist wants to design health facilities that can be imitated by medical leaders throughout the Third World.

Two other western universities, McMaster and McGill, have already provided assistance in establishing a nursing school for the Aga Khan facility.

Harvard experts will work specifically on a medical library, a program in neurosciences and courses on related social and health issues, Med School officials said this week.

In 1979, the Aga Khan gave $11.5 million to Harvard and MIT to establish a joint program for the study and preservation of Islamic architecture.