PESHAWAR, Oct 13: The NWFP Health Department is establishing the Khyber Institute of Child Health and Children Hospital with the financial and technical support of Japan.

“We have already got the concept paper for the project approved. The government of Japan will hopefully provide $20million for the institute in March next year,” said Prof Dr Abdul Hameed, focal person for the project.

The concept paper for the project had been approved by the Economic Affairs Division, Islamabad and was forwarded to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which had submitted the document to Tokyo for final approval of the grant, he informed.

The NWFP had at present only 1,000 general beds for a population of 11 million children of the province, which means that there is one bed for 10,000 children. The government being signatory to about 20 international conventions relating to child rights is yet to cater to the needs of child heath in the country.

Except the NWFP, all the three provinces had child health institutes where they were given specialised diagnostic and treatment facilities.

The government had also allocated a building vacated by a French NGO to the Khyber Institute of Child Health (KICH) in Hayatabad Township, which would be renovated and refurbished, said Dr Hameed, who is also head of the child health department at the Khyber Medical College and Khyber Teaching Hospital.

The provincial government had also pledged an initial amount of Rs10million besides provision of 16 kanal of land adjacent to that building in the Hayatabad Township over which 250-bed purpose built children hospital would be constructed.

The need for such an institute had long been felt because the children were rushed to other cities for specialised treatment.

Furthermore, the KICH to be built over a period of three years in three stages would play a supervisory role to integrate child-health facilities in the entire province.

Sources in the health secretariat informed that the ambassador of Japan had held a meeting with NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani on August 29 in connection with his government’s financial assistance, wherein the chief minister had directed to start the work on the renovation of the building as soon as possible.

“The chief minister had directed the additional chief secretary to hold a meeting with the official of C & W Department, but that is yet to take place,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Hameed said that there were no specialist doctors for specific health problems of the children and the KICH will have the facilities, such as ear, nose, throat, neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, paediatric surgery besides facilities required for diagnosis and treatment of kidney, blood and other diseases would be put in place.

“The KICH would also cater to the research side of child health. It would compile data about the prevalence of particular diseases and epidemics and devise strategies to cope with the problems,” he added.

He said the institute, which would act as a brain to pool all the resources in paediatric-care facilities, would also offer primary, secondary and tertiary care facilities simultaneously.

“At the moment, we lack data regarding various ailments among children. The institute would enable us to compile data about diseases and create a vision to the policy-makers to devise strategies,” Dr Hameed said.

About 110 children under the age of five died in every 1,000; whereas 90 out of 1,000 below one year of age children didn’t celebrate their first anniversary. In contrast, the only six children in 1,000 died in Sri Lanka due to the prevalence of integrated paediatric health facilities there.