The Pakistan Bait-ul-Maal (PBM) will establish its first state-of-the-art thalassaemia centre in Karachi in collaboration with the Omair-Sana Foundation (OSF), a non-governmental organisation.
This announcement was made by PBM Managing Director Abid Waheed Shaikh during a visit to the OSF’s thalassaemia treatment centre in the city on Monday. He said resources from his organisation combined with the foundation’s expertise would help in managing the hereditary blood disorder.
“I have come to Karachi to inspect the facilities of the Omair-Sana Foundation in thalassaemia treatment, management and prevention, and I’m delighted to see the research being conducted by them on the prevalence and treatment of the dreaded disease, in addition to its prevention. We are going to collaborate with the OSF in establishing our first thalassaemia centre in Karachi,” he said.
Shaikh cut a cake with children suffering from thalassaemia to celebrate their birthdays and vowed to use all resources at his discretion for the treatment and elimination of the disease from the country.
He said three of their thalassaemia centers were already functioning in Islamabad, Muzaffarabad and Chakwal, and their fourth centre would soon be made functional in Karachi. “We are helping with the treatment and management of 28,000 thalassaemia patients directly or indirectly by arranging blood transfusions for them as well as by providing medicines for iron chelation or through the removal of excess iron from the bodies of thalassaemic children.”
On the occasion, the PBM director general also announced the establishment of the country’s first national registry of thalassaemic patients, saying he was soon going to invite all public and private organisations to seek their assistance in establishing the registry so that combined efforts could be made for the prevention of the disease.
“Our direct objective should be preventing births of children with thalassaemia major, as currently 5,000 to 7,000 children are born with thalassaemia major every year in Pakistan.” Deploring that there was no concept of voluntary blood donation in Pakistan, Shaikh said that when a blood camp was set up at an educational institution having 1,600 students, only 16 of them donated blood. This, he said, was very unfortunate and regrettable in a country where thousands of children depended on blood donations for their lives.
The PBM chief further announced that his organisation was also striving for the establishment of a state-of-the-art bone marrow transplant (BMT) centre in the country in collaboration with Italian experts because BMT was the only solution to thalassaemia and other blood disorders.
Eminent BMT surgeon and OSF Secretary General Dr Saqib Ansari said that besides treating hundreds of thalassaemic patients, their organisation was striving for the prevention of the disease, and in this regard they had started research on thalassaemia’s genetics, molecular structure and usage of new drugs for the treatment of blood disorders.
“Our students are doing PhDs in different aspects of thalassaemia treatment and management and our research papers are regularly being published in international journals of haematology and health.”