KARACHI, July 26: The acting consul-general of the USA, Kay L. Anske, visited the National Institute of Child Health on Tuesday and assured the doctors of facilitating advanced training programmes for them in the USA.

The acting consul-general on the occasion was informed by NICH Director Prof Afroze Ramzan Sher Ali that the hospital catering 200,000 child patients annually from across the country needed specialists in varied relevant disciplines.

Expressing her gratitude to NGOs for their constant support in running the country’s largest neonatal unit at the NICH, with capacity of 70 cots coupled with required ventilators and incubators, Prof Afroze underscored the need for ongoing and updated training programmes for its doctors.

She said that NICH was in dire need of qualified paediatric gastro-enterologist, paediatric pulmonologist, paediatric neurologists, besides paediatric interventionists for its ICUs and suggested for long-term collaborations.

According to her, these experts are prerequisite to handle the growing number of children reporting with relevant diseases.

She said that sending two doctors from the NICH annually to a year or three-year course could efficiently help in tackling the issue of updated expertise scarcity.

Reiterating the significance of the issue, she said that during recent years pneumonia had emerged as the commonest killer of children in Pakistan there was no qualified pulmonologist at the NICH.

Prof Afroze Ramzan informed the US diplomat that the NICH contemplating to attain the status of Centre of Excellence in Child Health Care had also embarked upon specialized training programme for local nurses in paediatrics along with numerous training programmes for technicians besides offering hands-on training to postgraduate medical students in different disciplines.

The US acting consul-general, who took a round of the different projects sponsored by SADA Foundation besides the digital library of the NICH, was highly appreciative of the commitment and dedication reflected by the volunteers of the NGO led by Fouzia Siddiqui under the patronage of Fatima Suraiyya Bajia.

“Children indeed are our future and protecting them guarantees our future,” she observed following the presentations by Prof Afroze Ramzan and Fouzia Siddiqui.

Sada Foundation chief Fouzia Siddiqui briefed her in detail about the numerous projects undertaken by her NGO including the intensive work undertaken at the NICH focussing on strengthening available facilities with provision for arranging and paying for professionals, medications, food and so forth as required by NICH administration.

She said that 400 child patients with cleft palate, a congenital defect, reporting at the NICH were also being attended by the NGO.

According to her, chemotherapy treatment is also provided to six patients of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre’s cancer ward every month adding that this is besides 50 patients suffering from renal diseases and another 50 from diabetes adopted by the SADA and provided with all medical support.

She said that her NGO had also been involved in the NICH blood bank project for the last eight years.

Patrons of the NGO including Fatima Suraiyya Bajia, Barrister Shahida Jameel and Mehar Afroze Habib, besides other members were also present on the occasion along with senior doctors of the NICH and its nursing superintendent. — APP