KARACHI
Pakistan Peoples Party MPA Ms Sharmila Farooqui visited child cancer and other patients at National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in Karachi, inquired about their health and presented gifts to them.
During the visit, Sharmila mingled with the patients, including six-year-old Zoya and one-year-old Jaffar, and expressed sympathy with them. She was briefed by Director NICH Dr Nasir Suddle about the treatment facilities being provided to the child patients at the Institute, according to a statement issued on Sunday.
Talking to NICH director, Sharmila praised the Oncology treatment and Neonatal ICU facility and appreciated the working of medical staff. She said NICH is the largest government hospital for children of Pakistan catering to the needs of patients from all over Sindh as well as Balochistan. The provision of health services to children with medically advanced treatments in this hospital is a great achievement, she added.
She said that the childhood cancer is a potentially life-threatening so it requires intensive treatment, and NICH is meeting all these requirements. She said that the PPP government had kept health department among its top priorities, so all the hospitals of Sindh were being upgraded with better medical facilities and experienced doctors.
She said: “The provincial government is providing universal healthcare in the Sindh province at all levels including at the tertiary level. Treatments like cyber-knife, gamma-knife, liver transplants, bone marrow transplants, are offered for free.”
She said the Sindh government had established NICVD Chest Pain Units in Several cities of Sindh to provide revolutionary heart disease treatment free of cost, adding these units are working round the clock and had saved lives thousands of people.
NICVD is committed to provide Cardiovascular Services to the population of Sindh Province at their doorstep, while Gambat Institute of Medical and Health Sciences had proved to be great medical facility in Sindh with liver transplant being its greatest innovation across the country.
She further said that the provincial government also plans to take several measures to ensure the provision of free healthcare services at JPMC. This includes increasing its admission capacity from 1,100 beds to 2,208 and creating over 2,000 new posts.
The government has outsourced operations of children’s emergency services to the Child Life Foundation at nine government hospitals, including Civil Hospital and National Institute of Child Health (NICH), she further informed.
Sharmila said that the Sindh Health Department had also provided 25 free mortuary vans for Karachi, Hyderabad and other cities, and more such vans would be made available to the remaining cities.
