ISLAMABAD: Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, popularly known as the Mother of UAE, has ordered the deployment of a field hospital to Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan for the “diagnostic, therapeutic, preventive and surgical services” of women and children, the UAE Embassy in Islamabad said in a Twitter post on Friday.
Sheikha Fatima who is the third wife of the late founder and inaugural president of the UAE, has a long-standing history as a supporter of women’s rights in the region, and is chairwoman of the UAE’s General Women’s Union, president of the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood and supreme chairwoman of the Family Development Foundation.
The embassy said the field hospital would work under the supervision of volunteer doctors from the UAE and Pakistan as part of the Sheikha’s Global Humanitarian Campaign titled the Footsteps of Zayed.
In recent years, the UAE has assisted Pakistan in the provision of health facilities with a $108 million Pakistani-Emirati military hospital that opened in Rawalpindi in 2017, as well as plans for a huge integrated medical city in the federal capital, Islamabad, which was signed off with the UAE’s MBF group in August last year.
Earlier this year, crown prince Zayed Al Nahyan became the first UAE leader to visit Pakistan in 12 years.
After his visit, the UAE embassy in Islamabad announced that 40 development and humanitarian projects would be started in Pakistan at a cost of $200 million.