Dear Friends,
As Salamu Alaikum. Calamities like wars or natural disasters present unique opportunities for humanity to demonstrate compassion and generosity to reduce suffering and promote healing. Over the past seventy four years, Pakistanis have encountered too many tragedies resulting from wars, floods, and earthquakes but we have always come through because of our resilience as a nation. Personally, I include in this list the plight of underprivileged cancer patients that I witnessed first hand during my mother’s struggle with cancer.
Every year, approximately one hundred and seventy-thousand homes in Pakistan are struck by the calamity of cancer and, because of your Zakat and donations, we are able to offer relief to many of these patients. A special aspect of care provided by the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centres, in Lahore and in Peshawar, is that we provide holistic care, focusing on quality of life through all stages of a patient’s life, and of the treatment journey. We offer support to equip patients physically, psychologically and financially so they can fight an all consuming war against cancer. In the year 2020, the coronavirus pandemic presented major challenges to the delivery of cancer care. However, at our hospitals in both Lahore and in Peshawar, we were able to register more new patients than were seen in 2019, while ensuring continuity of care for all our existing cancer patients. As a result of your generosity, using your Zakat and donations, in the past year in Lahore, we were able to perform nearly 39,000 chemotherapy administrations, more than 48,000 radiation therapy sessions and around 15,500 surgical procedures. As I have said previously, the Lahore hospital is now running at maximum capacity. In Peshawar, we provided 13,659 chemotherapy doses and recorded over 17,000 radiation therapy sessions, which is a significant increase from 2019, in a sign that services continue to expand apace at our second hospital. With the completion of construction of four operating rooms and the planned commissioning of a new intensive care unit, we expect to commence surgical oncology services at SKMCH&RC, Peshawar in April this year, Inshallah. In Karachi, at our Diagnostic Centre and Clinic, we administered 1,323 chemotherapy doses. Upon completion of Pakistan’s largest tertiary care hospital in Karachi, where construction is already underway at full pace, we will be able to provide all diagnostic, therapeutic and palliative services under one roof for the people of Karachi, Sind and Southern Baluchistan. Ramzan is a month that allows us the opportunity to maximize the impact of our collective actions through Zakat. At the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust, we are very particular about disbursement of Zakat and take all necessary steps to ensure its utilisation is in compliance with Islamic injunctions and the aspirations of our donors. We never utilise Zakat for construction projects, using it instead only for direct patient care and all the Zakat that we collect in a year is utilised within the same year – it is never invested or saved. For the year 2021, we need Rs. 19 billion to continue the battle against cancer at our two existing state-of-the-art cancer hospitals, as well as to continue the construction of the hospital in Karachi. As in past years, we expect about half of this to be met through your generous Zakat and donations. As always, I know I can count on you not to forget our patients when giving your Zakat this year. Please give all you can, so that, together, we can all play our part in stopping cancer from wreaking havoc on thousands more lives each year.