RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Specialists at the Paediatrics and Child Health Department at Aga Khan University Hospital hosted a session Friday to introduce the medical treatment offered by the AKUH for child patients suffering from the more complex childhood diseases.

A press release from the hospital quoted Dr Babar Hasan, service line chief at the children’s hospital, as saying that:paediatric patients with complicated diseases require the specialized care available in the hospital.

“For many this specialized and high-quality treatment is not affordable. Welfare and zakat are their only hope to get multidisciplinary care of this level,” he explained.

The treatment required for recovery is expensive, he said, and patients can hail from very low-income areas, often coming to the AKUH at an advanced stage of the disease.

Doctors at the hospital facilitate the patients’ parents in getting in touch with the hospital’s welfare office.

The AKUH’s Patients Welfare Programme has disbursed over Rs9.5 billion to support over 2.25 million patient visits since the hospital’s inception in 1986, according to the

press release, and a significant number of these are children.