Quality work: Marking five years of saving lives

Civil hospital handed over its paediatric ER to the Childlife Foundation

KARACHI: We are pleased to have the ChildLife Foundation as a partner of Civil Hospital, Karachi and we will extend whatever help is needed to enable them to save lives, said the hospital's medical superintendent (MS) Dr Jamil Ahmed Siddiqui at an event to mark ChildLife completing five years of operations at Civil hospital's paediatric emergency room.

"Whenever I have visited the paediatric ER in the eight months since becoming MS I have found the staff delivering services to ailing patients," he said, adding that ChildLife's work speaks for itself.

ChildLife chairperson and founder Iqbal Adamjee thanked Dr Siddiqui for his continuous support, as well as former MS Dr Saeed Qureshi for helping the organisation realise its dream [of saving lives].



He added that we need to pay tribute to the staff working for the ChildLife Foundation, as their efforts need to be appreciated. Although the situation has improved after the foundation has taken over the reins of the paediatric ER, much work still needs to be done, said Adamjee.

Earlier, children were being treated on cement slabs in the ER and the situation was abysmal, lamented Dr Qureshi. "Now thanks to the team of ChildLife Foundation and Civil hospital, the paediatric ER has a welcoming look and every child is treated with quality care and medicine," he maintained.

Chief executive of the foundation, Dr Ahsan Rabbani, remarked that ChildLife has treated free-of-charge over 580,000 children in five years at Civil hospital.

He told the audience that the foundation operates three paediatric emergency rooms at Civil hospital, National Institute of Child Health and Sindh Government Hospital, Korangi, treating 450,000 children per year.

Through a partnership with Sina Health, Education and Welfare Trust, it also provides primary care to 500,000 patients per year through 22 clinics in Karachi's slums, he said.

During the event, employees were also awarded for completing five and three-year services with the foundation.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2016.