Indus Health Network: Hope for Millions
By Saman Mahmood
Pictures by Anwar Khawaja
An awareness session for the Indus Health Network was held in Riverside, California, on October 18, 2018 at the residence of MsRehana Qamar.
The Indus Health Network is the largest privately run, completely free, chain of public hospitals - providing quality healthcare to millions across Pakistan. Initiated by a group of professionals with the support of some philanthropists and businessmen, Indus commenced operations in 2007 with one hospital; and is now managing 12 full-service Hospitals in Karachi, Lahore, Badin, Bhong, Multan and Muzaffargarh; and outreach programs covering 41 Districts of Pakistan.
It is the first paperless hospital in Pakistan. They are also pioneers in design and application of ground-breaking technology leading to advancement of medical protocol.
Patient-centric care is the stepping stone of Indus healthcare system and the management believes that the doctor-patient relationship is much deeper than a customer-businessman relationship and the hospital staff’s main objective should be the restoration of health and lives, not accumulation of wealth.
The level of impact of Indus health services is truly phenomenal. Since its inception more than 6.7 millions patients have benefitted while more than 158,418 patients are treated monthly. IHN is constantly expanding its services to cater to the ever-increasing number of patients.The Indus Hospital, Korangi Campus, Karachi is being expanded to a 1000-bed facility while a state-of-the-art, 600-bed tertiary care hospital is being constructed in Lahore. Both hospitals would have medical college and school of nursing and midwifery. IHN is also running three physical and rehabilitation centers in Karachi, Lahore and Muzaffargarh. It has a hi-tech blood center at the Korangi Campus while it has three regional blood centers in Multan, Bahawalpur, and Jamshoro.
Global Health Directorate (GHD) is the public health arm of IHN. It implements community and facility-based programs across the country. Since early detection and prevention is as important as provision of quality treatment, therefore, GHD introduced family medicine clinics and launched community-based public health programs across 41 districts of the country to control TB, Malaria, HIV and AIDS. Currently, it is running 22 primary care sites and is aspiring to increase them to 50 sites by the year 2020. IHN also runs a research center. The research center makes targeted efforts towards improving health in underprivileged communities and low-income households.
Harvard University and Canadian public health sector officials, among many others, have visited the Indus Hospitals to understand the phenomenon of the Indus Health Network that is being run solely through the incredible spirit of donations of the Pakistani nation and overseas Pakistanis. IHN is collaborating with several international non-government agencies and healthcare organizations to reach out to more people. Initiating public-private partnership, IH has also collaborated and implemented their model in many Government hospitals of Pakistan.
IHN is a not-for-profit healthcare system which solely relies on public donations. Its primary funding comes from individuals in the form of zakat and sadaqat while the remaining amount comes from corporate donations and government grants. After establishing a resource generation network in Pakistan, IHN has developed an out-of-Pakistan system to generate more resources. Currently, it has four international branches to tap into the potential of Pakistani diaspora in the USA, UK, Canada, and UAE.
In USA, “Friends of Indus Hospital” is a 501 (c) 3 tax exempt charity that supports the Indus Health Network. The goal of FOIH is to raise awareness, among the Pakistani American community in the US and international donor agencies about the trailblazing efforts of the Indus Network, in order to raise funds for sustaining the provision of free healthcare services. The Friends of Indus Hospital is driven by a highly passionate and successful group of professionals who have a wealth of medical knowledge and fundraising experience at hand. FOIH has Chapters in all major cities of US, and the main office is based in New Jersey. For questions and contributions in California or to host an awareness session, please call Saman Mahmood at 714 681 0824.
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