Promoting Health for Teaching and Learning Through Distance Education: Lessons from Pakistan

Health and education are universally recognized as the key indicators of development. Unfortunately, Pakistan and other developing countries of the South Asian region have consistently scored low on both these indicators (UNDP reports 2004, 2005). As a step towards developing teachers for health promotion in schools, Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) offers several Health Education programs for in-service teachers. However, considering the geographical distribution of the clientele, who are mostly female school teachers that AKU-IED intends to serve, it is not possible to reach them through face to face programmes at the Institute in Karachi. Alternate modes of delivery, such as open and distance learning offer opportunities to reach more teachers in their own school contexts. Accordingly, Certificate level course in Health Education is offered via distance learning mode at AKU-IED. The aim of the course is to enable teachers to develop their own relevant basic health skills, teach and promote health within and beyond school into the communities. This article draws on the experiences of offering the course for the first time in Pakistan to highlight the opportunities and challenges for promoting health education through distance education. Lessons learnt from this experience are important for developing teachers through distance education in Pakistan and other developing countries.