Fixing paediatric care

Public healthcare in Pakistan is patchy to say the least — from non-existent in many rural areas to the nearly-acceptable in some urban areas. Those that can afford it have good healthcare at the point of need, but they are a minority. For children in urgent need of healthcare the picture is particularly bleak. In Karachi, the majority of public health facilities in the city have no paediatric emergency capacity. With 40 per cent of the 20 million residents of Karachi under 12 this is a serious deficit. Just five government hospitals provide emergency paediatric care. At three of them there is a public-private partnership between the government and an NGO that provides financial support but the need far outstrips the capacity to respond to it. For non-emergency cases the situation is better with many hospitals having children’s wards.

The health department is doing something about it, and has signed an agreement with Childlife to set up child emergency units in all districts of Karachi. This is a welcome move and maybe a pointer for the development of other crucial health services. Contrary to perception by many who are ill-informed, NGOs in Pakistan have been delivering quality healthcare in both urban and rural settings for over half a century. Partnerships with the government are increasingly common and Karachi is an ideal test-bed for the provision of such an arrangement for emergency paediatric care.

On Thursday, April 26^th Childlife inaugurated a 54-bed unit at Lyari General Hospital, and another is to follow at the government hospital in Saudabad. There are plans to extend emergency paediatric care to rural Sindh in June. Karachi needs 10,000 dedicated beds for child emergencies and there are around 9,000 such every day with just 2,000 treated in public hospitals. The seemingly impossible is being made possible, and public-private partnership has been the key.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2018.

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