Japanese government donates six ventilators to Indus Hospital

INDISPENSABLE GIFT

Consul general performs soft opening of health facility’s revamped paediatric ICU

Six new beds with ventilators and other equipment were added to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Indus Hospital Karachi on Tuesday with a special grant of around Rs9 million from the Japanese government’s Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects (GGP) programme.

“Today Japanese Consul General Toshikazu Isomura visited the Indus Hospital and we performed the soft opening of the revamped paediatric ICU with new ventilators, beds and other necessary equipment,” Indus Hospital Karachi CEO Dr Abdul Bari Khan told The News after the ceremony.

Eminent paediatric oncologist (cancer specialist) Dr Shamvil Ashraf, who is the chief of the Indus Children Cancer Hospital, was also present on the occasion.

Dr Khan said the grant by the Japanese government covered the cost of medical equipment such as ventilators, cardiac monitors, infusion pumps and syringe pumps.

The Indus Hospital has been providing healthcare services free of charge to the underprivileged since 2007; it has recently set up a new paediatric unit to provide better child health services and the new equipment has been installed in this unit, added the CEO.

He said the addition of six new ventilators would help the children in the city a lot, considering the extreme shortage of ICUs for children at public and private hospitals, as people were driven from pillar to post searching for ventilators to save their children’s lives.

During the ceremony, the Japanese consul general expressed hope that the equipment provided under the grant by his country would greatly improve child healthcare services in Sindh.

He also wished that the support from the people of Japan would further strengthen the friendly relationship between the two countries.

Under the GGP programme, Japan has funded around 350 projects in Pakistan since 1989, and this is the 16th GGP project to be implemented by the Japanese Consulate General in Karachi since 2009, he added.

The CG, along with journalists, also visited the Sindh Government’s Child Health Institute in New Karachi where the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s (Jica) staff briefed them about the background, purpose and significance of the project for improvement of child health with the provision of 1.423 billion yen to the health institute under the Japanese government’s Official Development Assistance.

The institute receives paediatric patients from all over Karachi, approximately 4.16 million, of which children under the age of 12 (the beneficiary group of the project) are around 1.77 million. The health facility enables the patients to receive specialised high-quality paediatric medical services and treatment with the most sophisticated medical equipment.

The unique aspect of the child health institute is that it is run by the Poverty Eradication Initiative, a Pakistani NGO, through public-private partnership under the supervision of the Sindh Health Department. This will be a good model for both Jica and the Pakistani government, said the Japanese official.