The Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) has taken over the more than 200-bed Children's Hospital at Nagan Chowrangi in New Karachi and started renovating it, with SICHN Executive Director Prof Jamal Raza vowing to make the facility fully functional by the end of this year.
He said the institute already runs 13 main and satellite centres across Sindh with over 480 ventilators, and that this capacity would help it restore specialised paediatric and neonatal services at the hospital. SICHN has been tasked with reopening the facility before the end of December 2026.
Provincial health department officials said the hospital, previously run under a public-private partnership, had remained closed after protests by its employees, leaving patients and their families without care. They said the prolonged disruption had hit residents of the densely populated neighbourhoods who depended on it for treating their children.
The facility was originally the Sindh Government Children Hospital, built on an 18-acre site near Nagan Chowrangi and inaugurated in 2003 by then Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan. It was run by the health department until 2016.
Under a project with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Sindh government, the hospital was reconstructed and upgraded. According to earlier reports, JICA renovated it at a cost of Rs1.7 billion and added a new 100-bed block.
It was then handed over in 2016 to the Poverty Eradication Initiative (PEI), a non-profit organisation, under a public-private partnership. The arrangement was contested from early on.
A 2017 report said the hospital's budget had been raised from Rs100 million to Rs440 million after the handover, and that the provincial health department had identified shortcomings in its running. The same report said outpatient turnout had fallen sharply.
In 2018, the health department decided in principle to take the hospital back, citing children who were still being referred to other hospitals in life-threatening conditions. The dispute later turned on funding.
In 2022, the hospital's medical superintendent said it had not received funds for 10 months, that its emergency department had been non-functional for six months and that its laboratory had shut. PEI's head said the agreement ran till 2027 and that the health department was not releasing the budget.
PEI has said it expanded the hospital so that around 500,000 children a year received free treatment. Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho told a Public Private Partnership Policy Board meeting that the department had signed a 10-year management contract with PEI in September 2016 and that the private partner closed the hospital in December 2021.
Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah directed that it be reopened within 15 days, said the government was ready to pay its liabilities and ordered an audit from the hospital's start. Families bore the brunt of the closure.
Reports said emergency cases were being turned away, and parents who travelled from across Sindh and beyond for treatment had few affordable alternatives, as many could not pay for private care. The SICHN was established under a Sindh Assembly act passed on January 28, 2019, and became operational on August 23, 2022.
Its network includes the Children's Hospital Korangi and centres in Sukkur, Larkana and other districts. Prof Raza said it runs 13 hospitals with a combined capacity of 879 beds and provides free care.