PESHAWAR, March 19: Children are the worst affected due to lack of healthcare facilities at the public sector hospitals in the NWFP.

Paediatricians told Dawn on Monday that there were only 195 beds for children in periphery hospitals, out of the total 3,052 beds, which showed apathy of the authorities towards 10 million children of the province.

He said some 65 per cent of patients in rural areas consist of children, but because of lack of facilities and trained manpower, these children were at the razor’s edge.

The paediatrician said out of total 3,000 beds in the teaching hospitals of the province, only 300 had been reserved for children. He said there was a need for a full-fledged child unit in the province where children could be provided treatment by specialists.

In most of the cases, parents were forced to take children to Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad even for minor ailments, which not only deteriorate condition of children but also made treatment cost much higher.

Except for the NWFP, all the three provinces have well-equipped hospitals for children where specialists of every field are available.

The existing facilities offer treatment to the children suffering from acute diseases only, while there was no hospital where they could be properly diagnosed and treated for chronic and complicated ailments, doctors argued.

They said it was an ironic situation considering the fact that a large number of paediatricians had been posted in almost all the districts of the province, but their services were not being fully and properly utilized.

In many cases children died of even curable and preventable diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery and gastro-enteritis, they added.

The government of Saudi Arabia and UK provided a grant of Rs96.9 million in 1983 for the construction of a women and children hospital in Peshawar, the land for which was provided by the NWFP government. Construction work on the hospital was carried out in line with the original plan, but there was an inordinate delay due to the inconsistent policies of the government and the hospital was later converted to a general hospital, because of the government’s apathy and vested interests of some individuals, sources said and pointed out that this decision dealt a severe blow to the healthcare facilities for women.