Having worked as a midwife in London's East End in the 1960s, Barbara Parfitt was used to poverty but was always aware that her role was highly regarded by the people she tended.

In her current role as founding principal of the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing in Bangladesh she is very aware that she is again struggling against great poverty, but in a culture where nurses are seen as one step up from prostitutes. " It sounds ridiculous but that is how they're viewed," she says. "They work at night and they touch people... and that's enough for them to be seen in this way. There are 24,000 nurses in a country that needs 250,000 and I'm not just aiming to rectify this but to bring about a social revolution by changing deep-rooted attitudes to women and to nursing. And it's working – the day before I left Bangladesh to come back to Scotland we had a sit-in."

Rather than being upset by this action from her students, Prof Parfitt admits to having to hide her glee at their reaction. "This is so unusual for women in Bangladesh and I think it shows how their nursing training is giving them leadership skills and developing their confidence and decision-making," she explains. "The reason for the sit-in was a mix-up over a teacher who was leaving because the students thought that we were pushing him out, when in reality he had decided himself to move on and although I was saying to them 'this is not how we should be resolving this' in my heart I was thinking 'Yes! We're definitely making an impact."

As founding principal of the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing in Bangladesh and Director of Global Health at Glasgow Caledonian University that fighting spirit is standing her in good stead. In 2009, when agreement was reached between the Grameen Trust and GCU to establish a leading college for the education of nurses and midwives in Dhaka, Prof Parfitt was one of the driving forces behind this decision, with a wealth of practical and academic experience gained over nearly 50 years. She qualified as a nurse and then a midwife in the 1960s and worked in the rural mountains of Afghanistan and Bhutan as a community nurse midwife, moving on to be a lecturer at Manchester University and complete her Ph D. She moved to Glasgow Caledonian University as professor and dean of the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Community Health in 1995 and was also the director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Midwifery and secretary-general of the Global Network of Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery but stepped down from her post as dean of nursing at GCU in 2008 to take up the role of director of global health development. All her skills and experience are needed to establish this new college effectively, though she does admit that nothing could have prepared her for the nightmare of balancing Bangladeshi government support with the trials of bureaucratic opposition from Dhaka University.

"The college opened to students in March 2010 with the aim of developing nursing and midwifery standards in Bangladesh to an international level through the provision of the highest-quality education and research," she says. "In Bangladesh the lack of trained health professionals is seriously hindering health development and the opening of the college is a step towards addressing the high maternal and child mortality rates as well as developing future nurse leaders for the area. The roots of this go back to the 1970s when the Grameen Bank provided funding for women starting small businesses, but it wasn't just about borrowing money to do this. They signed up to community development at the same time and had to say they would educate their children and now the brightest girls have completed their high school certificate and the question is where they go from here. We take the brightest girls into our nursing school and they take out a loan from Grameen to cover 40-50% of the costs. We got a donation of $2 million from Nike which covers the rest and the original aim was to use that over the first two years, but I'm very careful with money and it will now last us until 2013, by which time the whole operation will be self-sustaining.

"Our aim in founding the college was to allow students to benefit and through this to begin to make an impact on the community health needs of Bangladesh, while promoting new life skills for young women and beginning to break the cycle of early marriage, early child- bearing and often early deaths. However, we now face a problem in the nursing qualification itself as the students had signed up to do a BSc but Dhaka University has restricted the establishments which can award this, so the current qualification is a diploma, which isn't the full training I had envisioned. "

To say this is frustrating is an understatement, but then Prof Parfitt doesn't buckle easily. This is the person who set up the college in six weeks, including finding an appropriate building and getting it cleared of rubbish, painted and kitted out with electricity, computers and desks, while appointing four academics to teach the course and encouraging regular volunteers from GCU to get involved. "I see four options when the students finish their diploma, with the least attractive just leaving and getting a job with the qualifications they have gained. I'm negotiating with two private institutions that could offer some places to my students to do their BSc and discussing a similar possibility with Vellore Hospital, but my favoured course of action would be to do a BSc programme through GCU and effectively do it as distance learning, though this is still under discussion."

Her attitude is a clear reflection of GCU's principles, as principal and vice-chancellor Professor Pamela Gillies confirms. "GCU feels privileged to be working in partnership with Professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Trust in Bangladesh, sharing our knowledge and expertise to help grow the nursing capability so desperately needed there," she says.

"The university's commitment to the nursing college is perfectly aligned with our dedication to delivering practical solutions to challenging social problems and to working with others for the common good. This ground-breaking educational initiative would not have been such a success without the leadership on the ground provided by Prof Parfitt.

"She is an inspiration to all of the University's staff and students, who in turn greatly benefit from the experience of learning from our friends and colleagues in a country facing enormous health, social and environmental challenges."

Despite the many roles she has held over the years, Barbara Parfitt sees herself as a community nurse at heart. "More than 95% of women in rural areas deliver their babies without any professional help and getting highly skilled nurses out there will save and transform lives, " she says. " I'm determined to ensure our students gain the qualifications they need to do this."