MIRPUR (AJK): Azad Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan Tuesday laid the foundation stone of a fully equipped state-of-the-art Burn Care Centre at District Headquarters Hospital in Kotli city of Azad Jammu Kashmir.
The centre, to be the first of its own kind health protection facility in AJK State, is being constructed by world fame Kashmiri NGO Kashmir Orphan Relief Trust (KORT), running South Asia’s largest Rehabilitation and Educational Center in Mirpur AJK.
Chairman / Founder KORT Choudhary Mohammed Akhtar (TI) Minister for Health AJK Dr Nisar Ansar Abdali, Minsters Malik Zafar Iqbal, Deewan Ali Chughtai, Chudhary Ikhlaq, Rafeeq Nayyar and others also participated the ceremony.
The construction of a 20-bed Burn Care Centre will begin this month and will be completed in a year.
KORT will bear the full cost of construction, furniture, and necessary medical equipment and supplies as well as the operational cost of the Burn Care Center initially for 10 years, while the Government of AJK will provide 15 kanals of land, staff, and technical assistance during the operational phase.
The Burn Care Center will remain under the joint control of AJK Health Department and KORT where all poor and needy patients will be provided free of cost treatment. KORT will bear all the expenses of such patients jointly identified by KORT and AJK State Health Department.
Chairman KORT Choudhary Mohammed Akhtar told Prime Minster Tanveer Ilyas that the number of burn cases, reported in AJ&K, have been increased substantially with no existing health facility in the region resulting in deaths during transit to the hospitals in Pakistan. Against this backdrop, Health Department and KORT have decided to establish the first Burn Care Centre in AJK.
Akhter further said that the nearly 1.5 million catchment population of District Kotli, Haveli, and Poonch along the LOC area will have access to this state-of-the-art “KORT Burn Care Center” facility that will be specialized in providing First aid and treatment of burn cases.
Previously there is no such facility in the entire AJK region in the public or private sector and all the patients with burn cases had to go to either Rawalpindi /Islamabad or Kharrian.
As prescribed by the doctors, a patient with a burn case has to reach the specialized burn care unit within a specific period of time. As there is no such facility in AJK, in most cases patients die during transit or it is too late when they reach the burn care unit, Akhter added.