Intensive care facility for children opens at AKUH

Karachi 

Specially designed to treat children fighting life-threatening diseases, a new Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) was inaugurated at the Aga Khan University Hospital on Monday.

The new eight-bed facility, established at a cost of Rs200 million, will help facilitate a higher number of infants, toddlers and pre-teens whose health requires special attention.

A quick glance at Pakistan’s child mortality rates highlights the urgent need for dedicated facilities to treat children facing complicated diseases. One in 11 children die before their fifth birthday and one in 66 infants lose their lives before the age of one, according to Unicef’s State of Children in Pakistan report.

Over the past five years, the AKU’s teaching hospital at Stadium Road, Karachi, has seen a three-fold increase in the number of children requiring intensive care. The new Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) will provide personalised care to around 400 at-risk children every year thereby helping address the shortage of intensive care facilities for children.

Outlining the need for a PICU, Interim Head of the Division for Women and Child Health Professor Iqtidar Ahmad Khan said: “At present many critically ill children continue to receive treatment alongside adults in intensive care units even though a child’s needs are different to that of an adult.”

 “A dedicated facility will improve the availability of specialists for ailing children and also create a more comfortable environment for parents seeking the best treatment for their child,” he added. The new facility has eight large rooms whose open spaces have been designed to enable a variety of specialists to collaborate in treating the child. A dedicated waiting area is present for families and a parent can be with the child in the room whenever s/he is awake.

Every room is equipped with state-of-the-art ventilators and advanced syringe pumps to administer essential medicines. Monitoring systems constantly track breathing, heart function and electrical activity in the brain.