Maternal, child health care: Two neonatal emergency centres to open soon

KARACHI: To lessen the burden on National Institute of Child Health (NICH), a neonatal emergency centre will be inaugurated at Sindh Government Hospital Korangi No 5 soon after Eid, announced health minister Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar.

A similar facility will also be established at New Karachi Children Hospital, he added. The emergency centre in Korangi will be further enhanced to a well-equipped nursery for newborns, who are less than 12 months old.

Dahar was presiding over a meeting at his office on Tuesday, which was also attended by Dr Muhammad Tofique and Dr Zaman, the medical superintendents of hospitals in Korangi and New Karachi respectively.

While speaking to The Express Tribune, Tofique said that the facility would benefit the four million population of Korangi. "The facility would be extended to paediatric emergency centre and then have a state-of-the-art children nursery within a year."

NICH has the largest children nursery in Pakistan and patients from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Balochistan also visit the facility for treatment, remarked Dahar. In order to minimise the influx of patients at NICH, healthcare facilities for children are being enhanced in the different hospitals in Karachi, he explained.

Speaking about National Institute of Cardio Vascular Diseases, the minister said the hospital provides economical (and in many cases free of cost) medical facilities to children with heart diseases.

A cardiovascular institute would also be completed this year in Hyderabad and a children's hospital is also being established in Sukkur, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2016.