KARACHI, Feb 8: The Child Aid Association has planned a six-storey building for the expansion of its paediatric oncology facilities and establishment of a bone marrow transplant unit at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) at an estimated cost of Rs300 million.

This was stated by the CAA president and vice president while speaking at the launch of a programme for awareness and prevention of cancer in children at the NICH on Wednesday.

According to vice president Tariq Shafi, the authorities concerned agreeing to the plan have promised to provide a piece of land on the NICH premises, where the CAA has been running a health care unit for diagnosis and treatment of cancer in children for about 12 years.

CAA President Prof Nizamul Hasan told Dawn that since the NICH authorities had agreed to the plan, the association had started approaching philanthropists and the business community to collect funds for the building construction.

By the time the new building was constructed, the association would be able to engage a couple of bone-morrow transplant physicians for children and get some paramedics and technicians trained to run the proposed transplant unit, Prof Hasan said.

He added that so far the search for a competent and experienced physician in the country for the transplant project had remained a difficult exercise.

Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industries President Mian Abrar Ahmad, who was the chief guest at the launch, told the gathering that the business community, which had already been extending financial support to different health and education projects in the city would also take up the transplant project for consideration.

He said the KCCI was already working for the establishment of a standard university on a 120-acre land in the city. A health and medical education faculty in the university project would also be established, he added.

Mr Ahmad, however, offered financial support to the association for raising awareness of cancer among schoolchildren. He said KCCI members would help make CDs in this regard for distribution among school children in phases.

Giving a brief history of the CAA, Prof Hasan told the gathering, largely comprising businessmen and health professionals, that it was founded in 1979 for supporting ailing children undergoing treatment at the school of paediatrics, now known as the NICH, with a free supply of medicines and equipment which were not available at the hospital.

In 1999, it established the country’s first paediatric oncology unit at the NICH with the help of philanthropists, he said.

So far 3,500 patients had been registered for treatment at the oncology unit and half of them had fully recovered and returned to normal routine, he added.

Mr Shafi said: “We also established the cytogenetics, molecular and flow cytometry labs, which enabled us to pinpoint the type of cancer in children and provide appropriate treatment.” He said he hoped that the oncology unit would attain the international rate (70 per cent) of successful treatment of cancer children in the coming years.

Dr Salman Mahmood Burney, general secretary of the association, showed journalists different sections of the oncology unit, including an eight-bed ward and four-bed intensive care section. He said that 70 to 75 children visited the oncology OPD every day and between 60 and 65 per cent of them were found suffering from blood cancer.