PESHAWAR, May 24: A retired university professor plans to build a hospital to provide emergency services to the critically-ill patients, according to the World Health Organization. In this connection a meeting was held here under the aegis of the WHO on Monday at the health secretariat, which was attended by representatives of local NGOs, WHO, UNDP and TB control programme of UNHCR.

Bashir Khan Durrani, who retired as a professor of English department of Islamia College, University of Peshawar in 1995, plans to build the hospital in Charsadda in memory of his father Captain Nisar Durrani to provide emergency medical services to critically-ill people.

The hospital would also cater to the needs of mother and child health, said Dr Quaid Saeed, WHO's emergency medical officer. Talking to this correspondent Prof Bashir Durrani said that his family had built a full-fledged women ward at the district headquarters hospital, Charsadda in 1937 in the memory of his late father.

But the health department had demolished the same ward two years back, without bothering to inform them. He said that the hospital was built on the government-owned land, which had emboldened the department to demolish it.

Mr Durrani said: "This time, I have decided to build the hospital on my own land so that nobody could demolish it". He said that he wanted to provide free, but quality emergency services to those requiring urgent medical treatment.