City News, Thursday, June 04, 2009
By Shahina Maqbool
Islamabad
The first Paediatric Oncology Unit in any public sector hospital of Rawalpindi and Islamabad was inaugurated at the Children’s Hospital located inside the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) here on Wednesday.
Even though the 8-bed inpatient facility, with a minor procedure room for chemotherapy and bone marrow aspiration therapeutic biopsies and isolation facilities for immuno-compromised patients, was critically needed, it will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of people located within the large catchments area, which the hospital serves. What PIMS actually needs is a separate oncology centre with skilled staff and diagnostic facilities for treatment. Neither the Minister for Health, nor the chairman of Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal or the Ambassador of Italy turned up for the event, as was expected.
This resulted in a situation where Dr. Altaf Hussain, who is temporarily holding the position of executive director of PIMS and is responsible for running the hospital’s affairs on a day-to-day basis, performed the inauguration himself. Prominent among others were Dr. Lawrence Faulkner of cure2Children Foundation, Italy, Dr. Nuzhat Yasmeen, Assistant Professor Paediatric Oncology, and Dr. Sadaf Khalid, Pakistan branch coordinator of Cure2Children Foundation.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Altaf informed that the Children’s Hospital has been offering services in the area of oncology-a branch of medicine dealing with tumours and cancers-since 1985, but there was always an acute need for a separate oncology unit.
“However, at the moment, a small cancer treatment unit has been established to provide standardized care and isolation,” he said. PIMS re-organised paediatric oncology in November 2005 and subsequently started a tumour registry. As many as 450 new cases of different types of childhood cancers have been registered to date. Moreover, data shows 350 monthly OPD visits and 220 day-care chemotherapy visits.
Dr. Altaf said that the two-bed Bone Marrow Transplant Unit inaugurated at PIMS in January this year is fully functioning and has carried out transplants in Thalassemic patients in collaboration with and funding from the Cure2Children Foundation of Italy. He acknowledged the services of Lawrence Faulkner in this regard.
Terming the joint venture, as a prime example of public-private partnership, he said the unit is providing free bone marrow transplants to Thalassemic children. He hoped that the facility would be expanded to meet the needs of children suffering from life-threatening ailments like plastic anaemia and leukaemia as well. PIMS is in the process of preparing a PC-1 for a 16-bed unit.
The opening of the unit was followed by a seminar on bone marrow transplant at the MCH auditorium. The seminar was attended by specialists from all over the country and Italy, and was organised by PIMS in collaboration with Cure2Children Foundation, which is currently carrying out bone marrow transplants in Thalassemic children at PIMS, NIBD and Shifa International. PIMS is the only public sector hospital where this facility is being provided to patients, free of cost.
Although it was not an appropriate forum for a presentation on internally displaced persons (IDPs), Dr. Altaf seized the opportunity by summarising the efforts being made by PIMS to alleviate their suffering.
He said, PIMS is assisting the IDPs on self-help basis, and should the crisis persist, will make all possible efforts to mobilize resources to educate the children of IDPs.