Dr Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani woman who headed major UN agency, dies in New York

NEW YORK, Aug 15 (APP): Dr Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani medical expert who became the first woman to head the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a major UN agency, passed away in her sleep Sunday in New York where she had settled after her retirement. She was 92.
She leaves behind three children – a son and two daughters. Her husband Azhar Sadik, a businessman, died in 2011.
According to the people close to her family, arrangements for Dr Sadik’s funeral were being made.
She was the daughter of Mohammad Shoaib, a former Pakistani finance minister and vice president of the World Bank, who died in Washington in 1976. Shoaib served in the cabinet of President Ayub Khan.
Dr Sadik had a distinguished career. She served as Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General and his Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, after her stint as Executive Director of UNFPA, with the rank of Under-Secretary-General, from 1987 through 2000.
A graduate of Dow Medical College, Karachi, she served her internship in gynecology and obstetrics at City Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed further studies at The Johns Hopkins University and held the post of research fellow in physiology at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario (Canada).