To mark World Children’s Day 2018, Childlife Foundation in collaboration with Lyari General Hospital organized at LGH, Karachi. It was attended by parents of sick children besides pediatricians, general practitioners and senior doctors of Lyari General Hospital.
Dr. Ahson Rabbani, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Childlife Foundation sharing his views on the occasion said that more than 1,000 children die every day in Pakistan due to absence of medical treatment while 30 percent of those who manage to live are malnourished, which shows serious challenges for children in Pakistan. Children in Pakistan are dying from preventable diseases while those who manage to defeat these disease face challenges of hunger, lack of education and miseries due to social evils. A lot can be done to make Pakistan a safer place for our future generations.
He further said that efforts were underway to transform Karachi into a safe city for children where they had established Children Emergencies at the five teaching hospitals, which were saving hundreds of lives on monthly basis.
According to him, diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea were claiming scores of lives in Pakistan while malnourishment among young children had also emerged as a major problem in Pakistan, especially in Sindh. On the occasion, he urged parents to get their children vaccinated, feed them properly and give them education so that they could become useful citizens of the society.
Dr. Khadim Hussain Qureshi, Medical Superintendent, LGH congratulated the Childlife Foundation for their support and services for the people of Lyari and said he was trying his level best to arrange all the available health facilities to the children. He said despite shortage of medicine and broken medical equipment, he had arranged drugs with the help of philanthropists while some private organizations were also assisting the hospital in repair of faulty equipment and machinery. LGH is providing free of charge CT scan, X-ray and ultrasound facilities to people while an MRI suit is under construction, after which a latest, state-of-the-art MRI machine would also be installed at the hospital”, he maintained. Several other organizations especially hospitals and NGOs also marked world Children’s Day and pledged to make Pakistan a safer place for children.
Several educational organizations and schools also held ceremonies to mark the day and called for educating thousands of out of school children who were wandering outside at school timings as their parents could not afford to send them to schools.
Earlier, cake-cutting ceremony was also held to mark World Children’s Day 2018.
