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I am running the Norwich Half Marathon on the 25th of November for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and Research Centre. The Hospital provides facilities to alleviate the suffering of patients with cancer through the application of modern methods of curative and palliative therapy irrespective of their ability to pay. It's the only hospital of its kind in Pakistan and is looking to expand its operations from Lahore to Karachi and Peshawar also in order to ensure that people all over the country have access to treatment. 

At the moment, there are over 1.4 million in patients and over 80,000 die of the disease each year including 40,000 from breast cancer. Tragically most of these people pass away due to (1) Their poverty and (2) Lack of resources to deal with the disease. 

The Shaukat Khanum Hospital helps to reduce cancer mortality by helping to detect cases early. Early diagnosis programmes are particularly relevant in low resource settings where the majority of patients are diagnosed at very late stages and where there is no screening. 

In the context of treatment, all cancers with the potential for cure are treated at the hospital including breast cancer, oral cancer, leakemias and lymphomas in children and testicular seminoma. Palliative care designed to relieve, rather than cure, the symptoms caused by cancer and help people live a more comfortable life is also at the forefront of the hospital's work. 

Tens of thousands of patients have been treated at the hospital since its opening in 1994 and the amount spent on providing free treatment for patients so far is an astonishing $86m.

History of the hospital: 

The mother of Pakistani cricketer and philanthrophist Imran Khan died in February 1985- throughout her illness Imran witnessed not only her pain and agony but also of other patients and their families. Imran wanted to help and he decided to do something about it.

Imran Khan made a nation-wide appeal for collection of funds from a match between Pakistan and India on November 10, 1989 at Gaddafi Stadium Lahore, which raised Rs. 2,902,600. This was followed by a series of fundraisers held throughout the world. Pakistan's win under Imran's captaincy in 1992 cricket world cup in Melbourne helped fundraising efforts. He was able to collect one and half million pounds in just six weeks after the World Cup when the same amount had taken 2 years to collect earlier. He donated his entire prize money of 85,000 pounds for the project.

In 1994 when the project required more financing for the ongoing construction, Imran Khan launched a mass contact campaign in which he toured 27 cities in the country and collected Rs.120 million. During the entire campaign for the construction of the hospital, over a million individual donors from ordinary citizens to the rich and famous pitched in. Everything from cash to jewellery and valuables were donated.

In 1994 a $24 million state of the art cancer hospital was opened in Lahore, Pakistan. Over 165 million people live in Pakistan with an estimated 65 million below the poverty line. There are between 150,000 to 200,000 new cases of cancer reported every year in the country. Prior to the establishment of the hospital in 1994, no comprehensive facility dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer existed in Pakistan.

 

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