Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has inaugurated the largest pediatric intensive care facility in the province at the government-run Children’s Hospital in Karachi’s Korangi area. The facility, which has 28 beds and 52 incubators, was built under the newly established Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN). The CM stressed the need for more public health facilities to address the alarming situation of neonatal mortality rates in Pakistan, where 45.6 out of 1,000 newborns die. He noted that up to 80% of these deaths could be prevented by building more treatment facilities. The newly launched pediatric intensive care facility has achieved a success rate of 90%, compared to the hospital’s average success rate of 80% for other health treatment services.
“All the incubators at the hospitals were occupied, showing that there was a massive demand for intensive care facilities for the survival of infants whose health is compromised due to birth-related issues,” said the CM. He added that the facilities available for neonatal intensive care at large private hospitals in Karachi couldn’t compete with the overall treatment capacity of the newly launched Children’s Hospital in the public sector. Shah appreciated that private hospitals charge up to Rs100,000 per day for intensive care services, while the same treatment facility is provided free of charge at the newly launched public sector health facility.
The SICHN will build similar neonatal health facilities in six cities of the province, and ultimately, pediatric intensive care facilities will be available in every district of the province, Shah added. The CM promised that his government would allocate a sum of Rs3.3 billion in the next budget for building more pediatric health facilities in different parts of the province. The timely initiative is expected to benefit residents, especially those from rural Sindh, by providing specialized health services for newborns.
