Two weeks following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I stood before 40 undergraduates majoring in international development studies.

For the first session of a new course on world health, I was showing slides of medical and living conditions around the world. Suddenly, a picture on the screen brought back a flood of memories.

The room was dark and thick with flies where the woman and her daughters knelt on the floor cleaning dates.

The year was 1987, and I was a visiting professor at the Aga Khan Medical School in Karachi, Pakistan. Although I normally worked in the hospital, on this day I had joined a journalist doing interviews in a nearby urban slum.

The home we entered, like those around it, had no electricity or running water. In addition to the woman and girls cleaning dates, its occupants included the woman's husband — an opium addict -- and a 4-year-old son with brain damage following tuberculous meningitis.

Day in, day out, the woman slaved for pitiful wages. Educating her girls -- an investment known to yield tangible health and economic benefits throughout the world -- was simply not an option. Like their mother, they seemed doomed to lifelong illiteracy.

At least, I remember thinking: The girls had survived thus far. Back then, as today, preventable causes of death, such as malnutrition, diarrhea, pneumonia and measles, still claimed roughly one in 10 Pakistani children under age 5. But these pre-adolescents were not yet out of danger.

In a few years, they would also face maternal mortality. In countries like Pakistan, complications of childbirth can be a death sentence.

Many students in last month's class knew global facts and figures. But, as my account unfolded, they sat transfixed. Through fragments of one person's life, everyday poverty and suffering had become real.

In reliving the experience, I too was gripped anew by the vast gaps between haves and have-nots in our world. What wasn't said (but perhaps should have been) was how much those gaps fuel flames of hate that have now touched our shores.

As members of a university community and a great, international city, I believe we should bridge gaps and foster international compassion. The question is: How?

Traditional academic pursuits are not enough. Sometimes, it takes more than research and scholarly papers to motivate global concern and activism.

Perhaps acts of outreach can aid in the process.

This fall, as part of a novel program linking the School of Medicine and the College of Letters & Science, I feel privileged to share my working knowledge of global health with UCLA undergraduates. In the future, we hope to extend this educational outreach beyond our campus.

But one thing is sure. In the end, it will not be mere facts, but stories of people in need the world over that will truly pierce hearts.