After Lahore, Peshawar will get its own SKMCH&RC soon
Following on the outstanding success and popularity of the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (SKMCH&RC), Lahore, the Trust that runs this world renowned health facility has ventured into a similar project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Peshawar, will start offering its multiple services to the public in December this year. It has cost four billion rupees and taken three years to build. It will go a long way in catering for the needs of patients of the region and spare them the trouble of travelling all the way to Lahore. As it relieves the Lahore SKMCH&RC of a big load of patients, it enables the latter to accommodate other victims of the disease.
As a precursor to the hospital at Peshawar, the SKMCH&RC management started a diagnostic and clinical facility there which has, for nearly five years, been providing services to the citizens of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at its 15 laboratory collection centres and one Walk-In Clinic. These centres have become quite popular for the accuracy of results that Hospital laboratories provide.
For obvious reasons, the Lahore SKMCH&RC is utterly inadequate for the burgeoning population of Pakistan where an estimated 150,000 new persons contract the disease every year swelling the already sizeable ranks of these patients. The country, in fact, needs a wide network of cancer hospitals to take care of them. The trust management of SKMCH&RC intends building more such hospitals in different parts of the country.
As first priority it decided to establish a hospital of the same high standard at Peshawar as the Lahore hospital because as many as 25 percent of the patients who received treatment in the Lahore SKMCH&RC came from the northern region of the country. It also sensed the hardship these patients had to endure in travelling and finding accommodation in Lahore.
Over the years since it was established in 1994, the Lahore SKMCH&RC has built an impeccable reputation of consistently and meticulously maintaining a high standard of treatment that has ruled out the need to go abroad for treatment that only the rich could afford to do.
The Shaukat Khanum Hospital at Peshawar will also provide to the public treatment of the best international standard, which has become the hallmark its hospital at Lahore.
Before the Lahore SKMCH&RC began rendering its services, the people of Pakistan had not been accustomed to seeing a hospital that could rank among the best in the world in its state-of-the-art treatment, management and cleanliness. To their happy surprise the Lahore SKMCH&RC amply fitted the bill. For the general run of people, visiting this hospital was as if entering a dreamland: calm and quite welcoming atmosphere that invested the patients and their attendants with confidence.
The hospital broke a widely prevalent myth that cancer was incurable and proved that timely diagnosis and proper treatment completely cured the patient. Ms Sumaira Yousuf, the first registered patient of the Lahore SKMCH&RC, who performed its inauguration ceremony 21 years ago, is very much alive and kicking and is employed in the hospital.
In a country where the poor had nowhere to go for quality treatment, it held special attraction for them since those who could not afford to meet the expenses of treatment were not turned back. They could get quality treatment free of cost like the rich paying patients.
Records of the Lahore Shaukat Khanum Hospital show that those who receive absolutely free treatment account for 75 percent of patients. In order to ensure that there is no compromise whatsoever on the quality of treatment they receive even the hospital staff is kept unaware of their status i.e. whether they are paying or non-paying patients. This also helps them keep their self-respect.
As a result of its unquestioned creditable performance, Shaukat Khanum Hospital has become a household word in Pakistan and patients from all corners of the country come flocking in here. It has established itself as a hospital where the patients can get the best possible treatment available anywhere in the world. And for that reason it has gained international recognition.
Treatment of cancer patients in the country had been patchy before this hospital was built; there was no specialized hospital for that purpose. Patients either resigned themselves to fate or sought treatment abroad.
In that gloomy atmosphere the Lahore SKMCH&RC came on the scene to serve as a beacon of hope for the cancer patients. Another cancer hospital coming up in the country to provide similar high quality treatment facilities is equally welcome. It would make for a bigger number of people to get the benefit of treatment.
Located in the Hayatabad area of Peshawar the SKMCH&RC is spread over 450,000 square feet and will provide treatment facilities to cancer patients of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and adjoining areas including FATA and Afghanistan. It will be a larger facility than Lahore having the most modern, state-of-the-art equipment and will begin providing services in about two months’ time.
It must be acknowledged that these stories of excellence are beholden to the generosity of the people of Pakistan who first donated Rs 750 million to raise the landmark Lahore SKMCH&RC and have been magnanimously coming forward to run it for the past 21 years. It is also these people who have contributed four billion rupees for the Peshawar cancer hospital to construct.
There can be little doubt that the people who outdo other nations in giving charity in informal manner would keep sparing funds for running these hospitals.
