President’s Message
Fellow Khyberians,
On behalf of KMCAANA, I would like to thank you all for your strong support and trust in the KMCAANA executive team during the last year.
This last year has been anything but normal. The pandemic affected billions of people around the world in many different ways but its affects were felt nowhere more than in the health care. Many of our Khyber Medical college alumni serving in Pakistan and around the world lost their lives while trying to save their patients. We grieve with their families and honor them for their dedication to their profession and their patients. They shall be remembered forever!
KMCAANA hosted a very successful APPNA winter meeting in Peshawar in December 2019 before the Covid pandemic. Kudos to the host committee co-chaired by Dr. Arshad Rehan and our local host committee chairs Dr. Zahid Awan and Dr. Aamir Ghafoor.
An in-person summer meeting could not be held in the year 2020 because of the pandemic. We, however, had a very successful virtual summer meeting in July 2020. It was attended and addressed by the Dean of Khyber Medical College Professor Mahmud Aurangzeb as well.
Our alumni members remained engaged throughout the year and supported our various social and health care projects with great enthusiasm and passion.
In early 2020, Covid 19 pandemic hit Pakistan like the rest of the world. The surge was particularly devastating in Khyber Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with a mortality reaching 100% among patients requiring mechanical ventilation and critical care. Lack of adequately trained intensivists and subspecialists in the face of a new vicious, highly infectious viral disease with no specific treatment created an atmosphere of fear and helplessness everywhere.
KMCAANA teamed up with the critical care team at LRH at this time of need. Our volunteer intensivists and nephrologists rounded virtually every night from May 2020 to the end of October 2020. Since November 2020, these rounds have continued on a twice a week basis.
On behalf of KMCAANA, I am profoundly grateful to all our intensivist and nephrologist volunteers as well as the local critical care team for their extraordinary selfless effort that helped saved many lives and improved the standards of critical care in general. A more detailed report is found at link
Our membership continues to support our Khyber Medical College student scholarship program and sponsored 46 students last year. We are well on our way to sponsoring 50 students for year 21-22, Inshallah. Our student scholarship endowment fund has grown and is valued at more than $250,000.00 at this time Our membership donated toward more than 100 cornea transplants in the last one year as well as more than $10,000 to support a food supply program at the height of lock down in the tribal areas for the first time ever.
We are pleased to announce two new social / health care delivery programs this year. In collaboration with the surgical department at Khyber Teaching Hospital under the leadership of Dr. Mah Munir, KMCAANA will sponsor a “stoma bank” which will provide colostomy bags and other accessories to needy patients free of charge. Additionally, KMCAANA will donate pacemakers to Hayatabad Medical Complex in collaboration with the Association of Pakistani descent Cardiologists in America (APCNA).
KMCAANA depends on its members for all its activities. If you are not a member, please make this your premier 2021 resolution. You can become a member right on this website in as little as 5 minutes. Please let us know if you are interested in volunteering on any of the committees.
I would like to thank my executive committee, Secretary, Muhammad Taimoor, Treasurer, Sharif uz Zaman, immediate past President Humaira Ali for their support and effort to help organize and execute all our programs and projects.
I am especially thankful to Dr. Arshad Rehan, one of our alum and currently the secretary of APPNA for his energetic and steadfast support of all of KMCAANAs activities
Regards,
