Located in a small but beautiful village of Sermik, on the bank of the River Indus, the Zubeda Khaliq Memorial Trust was established to provide health care to the people of Baltistan, a poor region of Pakistan. Since 1980, hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from the Trust, with all services provided totally free of cost. In 2008 a 50 bed hospital funded totally by the founder Dr. Sikander and his family was built in Sermik about 40 kilometers from Skardu.

Dr. Sikander Hayat Khan was trained as a surgeon in the U.K. and after qualifying as an FRCS from London and Edinburgh he worked for the National Health Service in the U.K. for 10 years and then returned to Pakistan and joined the Polyclinic Hospital, Islamabad, as a consultant surgeon. Later on in the 1980s, he joined the then newly built Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) as Head of Surgery and also became a Professor of Surgery.