Children’s burns ward needs donations

KARACHI: An emergency ward for children at the city’s only burns hospital needs help.

Six clean beds, new ventilators and other equipment have been unused in the pediatric ICU since last September, when the ward was first designed for critical burns victims.

“We need Rs650,000 every month to run the ward, and we do not have that much money,” Burns Centre executive director Dabirur Rehman told The Express Tribune. Philanthropists like Abdul Sattar Edhi initially helped the hospital purchase two ventilators for Rs2.2 million. But the ward now requires additional funds to pay salaries as well as to hire additional staff.

The ward is looking for a pediatric consultant, five RMOs, 24 staff nurses, 14 ICU technicians, and eight ward girls. The centre currently has a staff of 140. Rehman claimed that the hospital operates on public donations, and not on any grants from the government.

When asked why children cannot be treated at the centre’s separate ICUs for men and women, Rehman said that those wards have no space for children.

“I also believe that kids should not be treated in the same room with adults because they can be traumatised by looking at scorched bodies all around them.”

Only children with burns below their necks are admitted to the hospital. Last year, 74 children, 36 boys and 38 girls, were brought to the Burns Centre, five of whom died. The others were discharged.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th, 2012.