MULTAN, Feb 8: The children hospital complex will have facilities for kidney and bone marrow transplant, according to medical superintendent Dr Nazar Abbas Gardezi.

Speaking to this news agency, he said the hospital was at the moment partially operative with 150-bed facility where 500 patients were treated in the OPD daily. He said the children were provided with treatment, including tests, free of cost.

He said work on the remaining portion, requiring Rs540 million, would start in June and would be completed in one year.

The MS said the hospital would also have the facility of cardiac surgeries like angioplasty. The complex would be the state-of-the-art facility for diagnosis and treatment.

Dr Gardezi said for sensitive facilities like renal and bone marrow transplant and cardiac surgery, it was imperative that the hospital should have the air-handling unit which was globally recognized as a prerequisite for these facilities.

He said the hospital project director, Prof Dr Khalid Abbas Bokhari, was alive to this requirement as he had the experience of working in foreign countries. He said the AHU saved the patients from catching infections from one another in the hospital. “It is a system of filtration and ventilation.”

He said the hospital would be equipped with the facilities of CT scan and MRI very soon.

He said old residential quarters had been demolished and on this 12.5-acre tract the construction would start shortly.

Dr Gardezi said the hospital would have ultramodern medical equipment and well-trained staff, including doctors and paramedics.

He proposed that the Chenab Club, which is adjacent to the hospital and is lying unutilized, should be handed over to the children hospital for residential purposes.

He said he had suggested the authorities concerned to also hand over the infertility centre for training of mothers on breast-feeding, as it saved babies from many diseases.—APP