Each year around 60,000 children are born with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) in Pakistan. A large majority of these children are unable to get the heart treatment that they require due to lack of facilities and personnel, and also due to the high cost of treatment. One heart surgery costs PKR 450,000 – 550,000. In line with its mission, Pakistan Children’s Heart Foundation (PCHF) continues to strive to provide top quality diagnostic and treatment options for these children, irrespective of their family’s ability to pay.
We have our very own PCHF Child Heart Center, at the University of Lahore Teaching Hospital (ULTH). We are operating this setup ourselves, with our own team of nurses and medical officers. Our aim with this setup is to provide the highest quality of care to our patients at the lowest costs possible. We are one of only three centres in Pakistan to be recognized by the International Quality Improvement Collaborative for Congenital Heart Diseases (IQIC). IQIC provides benchmarking data for healthcare professionals and guides quality improvement efforts.
We have built partnerships with different hospitals and institutions around the country helping us strengthen the outreach of our programme.
Our aim, by involving these various healthcare institutions from all over Pakistan, is to provide improved access to quality healthcare services for children from all over the country, even the remote areas where currently there is no access to treatment.
PCHF is also offering free Outpatient Department (OPD) services for all their patients. This includes free pre-operative and post-operative echocardiography tests and cardiology consultation.