Civil hospital’s Burns Centre gets new pediatric ICU

The centre used to refer children with serious burns to NICH.

KARACHI: The Civil hospital’s Burns Centre will soon start treating children, but that would depend on whether it is able to hire the relevant staff. The Burns Centre, which has separate ICUs for men and women, recently got a six-bed ICU for children too.

Children with burn injuries previously had to be referred to the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), according to Burns Centre in charge Dr Ehmer Alibran.

“We were only able to treat children with 10 to 15 per cent burns.” The centre also treated children with minor burns who came to its outpatient department, but had to turn away those with thoracic burns. “We referred nearly four to five patients every week,” said Alibran. According to available statistics, of the 74 children (36 boys and 38 girls) that were brought to the Burns Centre last year, five of them succumbed to injuries, while the rest were discharged.

While explaining the difficulty in treating younger burn victims, Alibran said that children’s skin is much thinner, and therefore more delicate, than that of adults. “Contact with the same temperature, for the same amount of time, will cause a much deeper burn on a child than on an adult.” Since skin is a major barrier to entry for all kinds of germs and bacteria, children with burnt skin are also at a higher risk of suffering from septicemia, a pathogenic infection that can spread quickly and is life threatening. The infection can be controlled by an immediate infusion of antibiotics and the patient needs to be shifted to an ICU so that a ventilator is close at hand to to restore their breathing in case of an emergency. Alibran was therefore very enthusiastic about Burns Centre’s new pediatric ICU. “It is a great facility and will enable us to treat children who come from all over the country.”  The project was started in last December and the private sector contributed Rs15 million for the ICU. The six-bed ward consists of four ventilators, six multi parameter monitors, one ECG machine and air purifiers.

Burns Centre president Abdullah Feroz told The Express Tribune that the children’s ward would start functioning by next week. However, sources within the centre say that the project appeared to hit a snag, as it did not have funds to hire the necessary staff. The new ICU, said one such person, will need at least one child specialist, five resident medical officers, 24 nurses, 14 ICU technicians and eight ward girls.

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