Dubai: Dubai donors supported a Sunday night fund-raiser for a non-profit Pakistan cancer hospital project led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.
The gala diner at Grand Hyatt Hotel in Dubai was held in support of a second Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, being built in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, the capital city of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa Province, which is governed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) party.
Khan opened his first cancer hospital in Lahore in 1994. He started the project after his mother died of the disease. The hospital, mostly run by donations, provides treatment to cancer patients even if they cannot afford it. Both projects are named after Khan’s mother, Shaukat Khanum.
The second hospital, which will cost some two billion Pakistani rupees (around Dh74.8 million) is expected to open some time in 2015.
Khan told a pre-event press conference that a third cancer hospital would be built in Karachi.
He said the upcoming Peshawar hospital would be “even more state-of-the-art” than the one in Lahore.
“Some leading hospitals in the US and UK don’t have some of the systems that we’ve developed, that we’ll have... There’s no private cancer hospital in the world that does what we do, in terms of free treatment,” Khan said.
The Lahore hospital runs on a budget deficit of some 3.4 billion Pakistani rupees every year as a result, he added. Up to 70 per cent of all cases and treatments handled have been free, Khan said.
According to the hospital’s website, the 176-bed facility provided more than 87,000 chemotherapy and radiation treatments in 2013. It has 1,808 employees on its books.
He was confident the Dubai fund-raiser would significantly help the project along, saying UAE-based Pakistanis have played an important role previously.
“I hope tonight’s event will be so successful that I won’t have to fund-raise again in Dubai... I have now completed 25 years of fund-raising since the first hospital.”
He also thanked other communities who have helped the hospital project.
Sunday’s fund-raiser featured a live performance by Pakistan singer Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan. It was hosted by Pakistan showbiz celebrities Aisha Sana and Sarmad Khoosat. Other famous personalities also featured during the show.
Khan, a living legend in the cricket world, is the chairman of the PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice) party, which leads a coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Khan said he would be visiting the UAE less frequently “because of commitments back home”.
He said the April “local body elections” are expected to be held in September after “delays because of a Supreme Court decision.”
Khan said PTI would introduce biometric voting to improve efficiency and reduce exposure to fraud.
Khan said there could no be democracy without an independent election commission and free and fair elections. He alleged there had been “rigging of historic proportions” in Pakistan’s general elections in 2013 by “big players” he would name in the future.
