KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has claimed that due to his continuous efforts on the improvement of child health, the provincial government has achieved a drastic reduction in child mortality from 104 to 46 per 1,000 live births over a five-year period.

He was speaking at a programme organised by the ChildLife Foundation held at Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital, Karachi, to celebrate the expansion of Telemedicine Network to 100 hospitals located in every tahsil of the province.

Those attending the programme included Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho and Secretary Health Zulfiqar Shah among others.

The CM said the provincial government developed a partnership with the foundation in 2010 with the objective to improve emergency care of over one million children annually.

Mr Shah said that since 2018, he had developed a network of health facilities that no child in Karachi was more than 30 minutes away from the world class, 24/7, free emergency services. “We have established emergency response services (ERs) in five government hospitals of Karachi,” he said and added that in 2019, the facility was extended in the five hospitals of the province each in Karachi, Hyderabad, Shaheed Benazirabad, Larkana and Sukkur.

Talking about the telemedicine, Murad Ali Shah said that by 2022, telemedicine satellites were established in all districts of the all taluka headquarters, and now in 2023, in all tehsils of Sindh.

The telemedicine satellite centers improve quality as children specialists provide emergency consultation and the facility is accessible 24/7, saves critical time to treatment and financial burden on parents on traveling to major cities and on the job coaching of government doctors.

Talking about the achievement of the Sindh government in children’s healthcare services, the CM said the Unicef-supported MICS survey of 2021 reported a drastic reduction in child mortality in Sindh from 104 to 46 per 1,000 live births over a five-year period. “This is possible due to the focus of the Sindh government on child health, especially through public-private partnership programmes”.

In 2018, the Economist Intelligence Unit rated Sindh as the 6th best in partnerships in Asia, he added.

Mr Shah said his government had extended full support to the ChildLife Foundation, and he was proud of their achievements. “New buildings, renovations, and equipment are inputs as a first step, but our objective is the outcome — the quality healthcare,” he said and added that the foundation was a prime example of using innovations to improve quality and scale of healthcare facilities.

“I am impressed with how the foundation is leveraging the synergy of partnerships to attain increased impact,” the CM said and added he was excited about what it could achieve.

Mr Shah said, “The groundwork has been done; we have achieved significant success, but still we have higher aspirations.”

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2023