PESHAWAR, Feb 27: Imran Khan will lay the foundation stone of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in Peshawar in the second week of March.

“The Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust aims to develop a series of hospitals in selected cities of Pakistan to provide state-of-the-art cancer diagnostic and therapeutic facilities. In this connection the second hospital is being built in Peshawar,” said Khawaja Nazir Ahmed, the public relations officer of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore.

Talking to Dawn on Sunday, he said that that the proposed hospital would provide diagnostic and therapeutic facilities to patients under one roof.

It will also offer training facilities to local doctors in medical oncology, radiation oncology, nuclear medicine, radiology, pathology, internal medicine and anesthesia. “These departments have been recognised for specialisation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan,” he added.

He said that over a period of time, enough number of doctors could be trained in those specialities to serve people in other government-run hospitals.

Appreciating Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for allotment of land for the hospital, Mr Ahmed said that the project would be completed in three years at a cost of Rs400 million. The decision to build the hospital in Peshawar had been prompted by the fact that 50 per cent patients visiting Shaukat Khanum Lahore belong to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and tribal areas, he said.

The Afghan refugees living in those areas would also beneficiaries of the facility.

The hospital would be completed in three phases. In initial phase, the hospital will deliver outpatient and inpatient chemotherapy, but it will not have facilities for surgery or radiation treatment. “During this phase, the hospital will function principally as a chemotherapy delivery unit with a set of minimal but essential associated ancillary facilities,” Mr Ahmed said.

In the second phase, the facility will get the potential to be scaled up to a full-fledged cancer hospital with all diagnostic and therapeutic facilities, such as clinics for medical oncology, pediatric oncology and palliative care. “During the third phase, the hospital will be developed into 24-bed facility where patients requiring hospitalisation will get admission,” he said.

The hospital will have its own pharmacy, 16 beds chemotherapy section, satellite laboratory and walk-in-clinic. By the year 2014, all the local patients would be treated at the hospital which will lessen burden on Lahore hospital.

Mr Ahmed said that SKMCH was established in Lahore in 1994 to alleviate the suffering of patients with cancer through application of modern methods of curative and palliative therapy, irrespective of their ability to pay.

“Nearly 75 per cent patients have been treated on financially supported treatment costing Rs9 billion,” he said. The SKMCH has been awarded the WHO's UAE Foundation Prize for outstanding work in health development in 2006.