LAHORE, Jan 3: Safi Khan is among the 100 or so children being treated at the Children's Hospital for advanced liver diseases without much hope for a cure.

The four-year-old Khan and three others require immediate liver transplant, which their parents cannot afford as the facility is not available in any public sector hospital in the Punjab, and its cost and mortality rate at the private clinics is very high.

A senior paediatrician of the Children's Hospital told Dawn on Monday that a proposal to set up a transplant centre at the infirmary was submitted to the chief minister a few months ago.

"Though the chief minister has ordered the constitution of a committee, but a notification in this regard is yet to be issued by the health department," the doctor said.

"We are helpless. We can't do anything for these innocents. We can only try to minimize their pain and watch them die. We have the expertise which, if properly channelized along with the provision of infrastructure, can save so many lives," he added.

"In Pakistan, the liver transplant is performed only at the SIUT in Karachi and that too by a team of the King's College of the UK usually once a year," another doctor said.

"If the government takes the initiative, a liver transplant in a public sector hospital will not cost more than Rs400,000," he said. "Once the government takes the initiative, philanthropists will also come forward, pick up the costs to help save many precious lives."

The father of a boy, who was fortunate enough to have a transplant from the US, told this reporter that the procedure had cost him $280,000. "I had also contacted Indian surgeons, who demanded Rs2 million to Rs2.5 million in Pakistani currency for the procedure, before deciding to go to the US. The Indians have to pay Rs600,000 for liver transplant in their country," the businessman said, wishing to remain anonymous.