CHARSADDA: Sudais Medical Centre presents a ray of hope for the hearing impaired children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as such children are being operated upon successfully with cochlear implant surgery and now they can live a normal life with all the abilities of hearing and speaking.

Talking to media persons at the SMC, chief executive officer (CEO) Asmatullah Asar said that cochlear implants were not only the most advanced but also the most expensive treatment for deaf and dumb kids. Surgery of one child could cost Rs2.5 million which was beyond the reach of poor people, he said.

He said the hospital administration had inked an MoU with Baitul Maal for the provision of funds to the poor patients for implants. He said renowned surgeon Dr Maqbool Baloch had performed successful surgeries of about 34 speech and hearing-impaired children so far in this hospital.

It merits a mention here that there are two such hospitals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa- one is in Charsadda and the other in Saidu Sharif , Swat - which have the facilities to perform cochlear implants and most of the operations are successful in children aged between three to five years.

Children with this illness are being brought to the medical center at Charsadda from across the country. The medics in the hospital told media persons that the surgery take four hours, after which the children are put under observation for 24 hours in the hospital and then they are shifted home. Later therapy is started in which the parents play an important role, and after a year with their full attention, the child become able to return to school in a normal position.

Surgeon Dr Maqbool Ahmed Baloch told local media persons that this cochlear implanting facilitywas availablee in most hospitals of Punjab and Sindh, but unfortunately, the hospitals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan had no such facilities.

He said that no successive governments allocated any funds for this purpose. He stressed the need to include the cochlear implant surgery in government- sponsored health card scheme.

On this occasion, Bahadur Khan of Katlang, Mardan, Shahbaz Khan of Bajaur, Janus Khan of Kaladhir, Charsadda and others told media persons that they had brought their speech and hearing impaired children to Sudais Medical Center Charsadda for treatment and their surgeries were successful.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2024