Faisal Sultan is a Pakistani infectious diseases physician and is the Chief Executive Officer of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centres, Pakistan. He served as the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services in Pakistan during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sultan studied at the Cadet College Hasanabdal in Pakistan and graduated from the King Edward Medical College in Pakistan. He subsequently trained in the United States in internal medicine at the University of Connecticut (1989-1992) and in infectious disease at Washington University School of Medicine (1992-1995). He is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in internal medicine and infectious diseases. Sultan is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh, UK and of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Pakistan.
Sultan has served at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre since 1995 as an infectious diseases physician. He was the Medical Director of the Hospital from 2000 to 2002 before being appointed as the Chief Executive Officer in 2003. After onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Sultan was appointed as the Prime Minister’s Focal Person on COVID-19 in Pakistan and later as the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services in Pakistan, a position he held for two years.
Sultan has been a trainer and examiner in Infectious Diseases for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan and has authored multiple scientific publications. He has also served as a member of advisory committees for various organisations, including the Punjab Healthcare Commission, National AIDS Control Program, Pakistan Medical Research Council, Pakistan Science Foundation, University of Health Science of Pakistan and the School of Biological Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore.
He was part of the Core Group for setting Pakistan’s National Accreditation Standards for Hospitals, Ministry of Health. He has also served on the Prime Minister’s task force on health and as chairman of the board of governors, Medical Teaching Institute Khyber Teaching Hospital Peshawar, as well as on the steering committee for the Punjab Health Strategic Plan.
He has contributed towards various global health initiatives as well. In the past, he has served on the Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Advisory Committee (HVAC) of the WHO and as a member of the board of governors at GAVI, Geneva, Switzerland (2021-2022). Currently, he is a member of The Carter Center’s International Task Force for Disease Eradication (ITFDE) in Atlanta, USA.
Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centres
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To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
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Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to