The pediatric surgery department of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) Saturday received a big chunk of medical supplies and surgical equipment from a US charity, reports BSS.
The charity, Children of Abraham, donated the supplies worth around Tk 20 million for the betterment of childcare at DMCH, the biggest public sector hospital in the country which serves 5,000 people everyday against 1,700 beds.
A Bangladeshi-born physician now a professor of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Dr Ziauddin Ahmed, arranged the donation.
"We have received 720 pieces of supplies that would help improve pediatric services, especially surgeries, at DMCH," pediatric surgery's assistant professor Abdul Hanif Tablu told the news agency, pointing to a 14-tonne big container being unloaded by labourers at the hospital's main entrance.
The supplies include microscopes, endoscopic equipment such as laparoscopes, colonoscopies and ultra sonogram machines as well as mechanical and electric beds, medicine carts and overhead operating lights.
Dr Tablu, who spearheaded the shipment of the supplies, said this is the largest donation ever received by the hospital. He said the US charity had earlier donated medical supplies to Kumudini Hospital, Chittagong Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) and Kidney Foundation in Bangladesh.
The surgical equipment are likely to have a positive impact on saving more child lives through enabling pediatric surgeons to deliver state of the art surgeries at DMCH, where neonatal deaths have already been curtailed to help attain millennium development goal (MDG)-4 on child survival.
Hospital sources said the death rate of newborns from surgeries was 80 per cent at the hospital in 1990s and it has been declined to merely 8 per cent in 2010. The survival rate from complicated surgeries of children under four weeks of age is now 92 per cent.
The national board of revenue has exempted all taxes to import the free medical supplies from the US, sources said adding the equipment are mainly dedicated to poor children of the country.
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US charity donates medical supplies to DMCH
August 15th, 2010215 views