Sans neonatal care: Newborns forced to turn to Lahore for treatment

Majority of them cannot reach there on time and die on the way

PESHAWAR: Although tall claims have been made by the provincial government with regard to reforms in the health sector, there is not a single neonatologist in K-P.

Therefore, parents have to take their newborns to Children Hosptial Lahore in Punjab where a majority of them cannot reach on time and eventually die.



“We have neither a neonatologist in K-P nor a department to treat newborn babies up to 28 days old,” Pakistan Paediatric Association K-P President Dr Amin Jan said.

He added 55 out of 1,000 infants do not survive and 50% of the 55 infants die of different infectious diseases, including pneumonia or malaria, while 30% succumb to malnutrition.

“The government has been pouring money into polio eradication and I don’t say this should stop,” he told The Express Tribune at the neonatal life support workshop at Khyber Teaching Hospital on Saturday. “They should rather continue [with the polio cause] but must focus on diseases that kill newborns.”

Another route

In this case, most of the burden is shifted to Children Hospital Lahore which is one of the best facilities for neonatal treatment in the country. It has around 43 subspecialists, but it is overburdened in the absence of neonatologists as around 12 of them offer services across the country.



“Children don’t die in front of you. They breathe their last in front of me and it really hurts [more so] because we are unable to manage the load at the facility,” Dr Irfan Waheed, a neonatologist at the Children Hospital Lahore said. He was in Peshawar to train people on neonatal life support and basic ventilation at KTH.

He stressed on the need to set up child hospital facilities in every province since majority of the infants cannot make it to Lahore and die on their way. “All [the funds] are diverted towards the eradication of polio, but other diseases, including diphtheria and tetanus, are targeting infants, which is alarming.”

Waheed added, “Our future is at stake; this issue needs to be addressed at the earliest since we are among the top three countries in the world with the highest number of infant deaths and top of the list as far as Asia is concerned.”  He said each person involved in the delivery of babies must have knowledge on essentials regarding newborn care, adding that health centres in rural areas should be focused in places where majority of the cases are reported from.

Besides Waheed from Lahore, doctors from Rawalpindi and Bahawalpur also held sessions during the workshop.

On Friday, K-P Assembly Deputy Speaker Dr Meher Taj Roghani addressed participants of the workshop, stressing on training health care providers to improve the neonatal resuscitation and ventilation care to newborn babies so that infant mortality rates are decreased. She assured participants that the K-P government will extend complete support for such activities.

Besides neonatologists, the provincial government also lacks urologists, gastroenterologists and cardiac surgeons for children. Therefore, infants with such illnesses are driven to Lahore for treatment.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2016.