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Saudi-Pakistan telehealth platform to train 1,500 Afghan doctors with Islamic Development Bank funding

This undated file photo shows an Afghan doctor attending virtual lectures at Shefajo Hospital in Kabul. (Photo courtesy: EDUCAST)
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Updated 10 March 2023
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Saudi-Pakistan telehealth platform to train 1,500 Afghan doctors with Islamic Development Bank funding

  • The Jeddah-based IsDB has approved $180,000 for six online health education centers in Afghanistan
  • Under the initiative, Afghanistan's doctors will also be provided in-person training at Pakistani hospitals
Updated 10 March 2023
KHURSHID AHMED   

KARACHI: EDUCAST, a Saudi-Pakistani virtual training and education platform based in Karachi, is set to train more than 1,500 Afghan doctors under its eDoctors program through financial support of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the EDUCAST CEO said on Thursday.

EDUCAST, a joint venture between overseas Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, was established in 2016 under patronage of Prince Miteb bin Thunayan and Prince Abdul Aziz bin Miteb.  

The Saudi-Pakistani platform through its eDoctors program currently provides tele-health services in Pakistan and Yemen. The program was initiated in 2019 to bring back female doctors who had abandoned the profession due to various reasons, including marriages, with most of them having moved out of Pakistan.  

For Afghanistan operation, the IsDB has approved $180,000 under its technical assistance grant for setting up innovative online health education centers and second-opinion services to Afghan doctors by international experts. 

“EDUCAST has been awarded Grant Assistance from IsDB for carrying out Afghanistan Medical Education uplift program and online specialist opinion services to the Afghan doctors in six Afghan provinces,” Abdullah Butt, founder and CEO of EDUCAST, told Arab News on Thursday.   

Butt informed that after a successful pilot project six months back, the platform was now ready to start its full-fledged operation in Afghanistan.  

“Starting from the current month, we will set up tele-health education and clinical support facilities in six regional hospitals in Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar[i-Sharif] and Khost,” he said. 

The fund provided by the Jeddah-based IsDB will be utilized to enhance capacity of up to 1,500 Afghan doctors by delivering online training, certification and enabling doctor-to-doctor online consultation.  

The platform and the lender are expecting that the program will benefit thousands of patients.   

“The online training program will be followed by in-person training for one or two months in Pakistan’s hospitals in Peshawar, Karachi and Islamabad in key health-related areas of high demand, including maternal and neonatal child health, infectious and non-communicable diseases,” Butt said. 

Under the program, senior healthcare consultants from around the globe will deliver on capacity development of Afghan doctors by conducting virtual seminars. The six regional centers in Afghanistan will also serve in running a basic second opinion from Pakistani health specialists and Afghan doctors abroad, according to Butt.

Pakistani doctors, trained under the eDoctor program and currently living in Pakistan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, will be offering their services.

Since 2019, the tele-health platform has enabled around 1,200 doctors to join its network with the support of IsDB. These eDoctors have provided healthcare and counseling to over 4.4 million patients in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh during the COVID-19 pandemic, in collaboration with the Sindh health department and the Dow University of Health Sciences. 

Butt said EDUCAST, for the last one year, has been operating with Shefajo Hospital in Kabul to provide tele-health and online education services to citizens of the Afghan capital.  

“In the IsDB-funded project, the possibility of the provision of healthcare services in Afghanistan was identified as a solution to the adverse impacts of economic and political instability, after the withdrawal of international donor agencies from Afghanistan,” he added.  

Afghanistan, since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, has been facing lack of operational standards and clinical service quality decline, due to less experienced healthcare management and fewer experienced medical practitioners. 

The Afghan doctors currently practicing in the war-torn country lack continuous medical education (CME) training in their relevant fields, which impacts the quality of services being offered, according to the EDUCAST founder.  

“The medical universities in Afghanistan do not offer CME-related programs, so establishing tele-medicine and e-health as national platforms has been suggested to improve overall healthcare service delivery,” Butt said.  

The Saudi-Pakistani tele-health platform is also active in Yemen and providing services to women and children through online doctors sitting in various countries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman.

Topics: Educast Educast Society Pakistan Saudi Ties

Pakistan's Sindh announces judicial inquiry into deadly Karachi plaza fire

Updated 10 sec ago
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Pakistan's Sindh announces judicial inquiry into deadly Karachi plaza fire

  • Around 80 people were killed in Karachi Gul Plaza fire that broke out on Jan. 17, says Sindh information minister
  • Says initial fact-finding committee discovered fire tenders were provided water with delay, which affected firefighting
Updated 10 sec ago
UROOSA JADOON

ISLAMABAD: Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon announced on Thursday that the provincial government has requested a judicial inquiry into a deadly Karachi shopping plaza inferno that killed around 80 people earlier this month. 

The fire broke out at Karachi's famous Gul Plaza, a multi-story shopping complex in the city's Saddar area, on the night of Jan. 17. The blaze killed 80 and took three days to extinguish, while rescue and relief efforts took over a week. 

Speaking to reporters during a news conference, Memon said a Sindh cabinet sub-committee, chaired by Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, reviewed a fact-finding committee report on the Karachi Gul Plaza fire. 

He said the fact-finding committee discovered that the Civil Defense department conducted fire safety audits of the mall and other buildings since 2023, but no effective, precautionary or legal action was taken to ensure such incidents were avoided. He said as a result, the Civil Defense director and the department's additional controller for district South were both suspended. 

"A letter is being written to the honorable chief justice of the Sindh High Court in which we are requesting the chief justice to appoint a serving judge for a judicial inquiry," Memon said. 

"So that we can review everything in accordance with the law himself and take decisions on it."

Memon said that there were around 2,000 to 2,500 people in the building when the fire broke out, adding that these included workers and visitors. 

He said the sub-committee had also noted that fire tenders were provided water with delay which affected the firefighting services of the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC), Rescue 1122 and fire brigades. 

The minister said the government had also suspended the chief engineer and in-charge hydrants of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, and that action will be taken against them. 

Memon said the committee had also concluded that the KMC, Rescue 1122 and fire brigades' firefighting tools and training to deal with an inferno of such a scale were "inadequate."

He said the government has also suspended the senior director of municipal services in the KMC and that departmental action against him will be taken for not ensuring that the fire staff was properly prepared to tackle such a blaze. 

The minister said the sub-committee had directed the relevant department to carry out a needs assessment so that the firefighting capabilities of the provincial and local government are further strengthened. 

Fires have become an increasingly frequent occurrence in Karachi, a megacity of more than 20 million people, where fire services remain severely overstretched and under-resourced relative to population density and the scale of commercial activity.

Successive deadly incidents have drawn criticism of the provincial Sindh administration over lax enforcement of building codes, inadequate inspections and limited emergency response capacity.

Sindh's opposition parties, especially the Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan, accuse the Sindh government of neglecting Karachi's infrastructural development. The provincial government rejects these allegations. 

Topics: Gul Plaza fire Karachi deadly fires Sharjeel Memon Judicial inquiry

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