CHENNAI: The Omayal Achi College of Nursing and Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada, signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday.

The three-year MoU involves exchange of faculty, staff and students between the institutions and developing collaborative research and educational programmes to improve the health of the community.

Simon Fraser University had established a department for health sciences to focus on public health, said John H. Waterhouse, the university provost, who signed the memorandum.

The other signatory, Valli Alagappan, managing trustee of Omayal Achi College of Nursing, said the college would send students to Canada for a master's course on global health by next year.

David R. Maclean, dean of the faculty of health science at the university, pointed out that health dynamics were influenced by globalisation.

Arun Chockalingam, director of global health at the university, said 90 per cent of the population in middle and low-income countries did not have access to healthcare.

Though India is well known for clinical diagnosis, technological advances in medicine "are driving up the cost."

K. Srinath Reddy, head of Department of Cardiology, AIIMS, New Delhi, said the partnership was necessary as public health was a neglected subject.

In a knowledge-driven world, effective sharing of knowledge was necessary. He called on nursing colleges here to emulate the Canada model, so that nursing was accorded the status it deserved.

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