Hospital built using YOUR cash set to open (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Hospital built using YOUR cash set to open

9:00am Wednesday 13th March 2013 in News By Dolores Cowburn, Bradford Chief Reporter

A hospital in Pakistan built with the help of cash from a Telegraph & Argus appeal is due to open its doors with an official ceremony this month.

And the main ward will be named after the T&A in recognition of readers who helped to raise more than £80,000 to make the dream become a reality.

The T&A teamed up with the Lord Mayor of Bradford’s Kashmir Earthquake Appeal Trust to build a hospital after more than 87,000 people lost their lives and hospitals were wiped out when a devastating earth-quake struck close to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-governed Azad Kashmir, in 2005.

Meanwhile a group of doctors in the Midlands, who helped the victims after the disaster, set up the Midland Doctors Association UK (MDAUK), also to build a hospital.

The appeals were combined with T&A readers donating £81,707.52.

Dr Syed Yusuf Iftikhar, the MDAUK chairman and a consultant surgeon at the Royal Derby Hospital, said that by the inauguration ceremony on March 21 everything would be ready. He travels to the hospital every three months to help out in addition to his UK job.

“We will be naming the main ward after the Telegraph & Argus because you donated a substantial amount of money,” he said.

“It makes a big difference and the cost of the project was £2 million. We are starting with outpatients and then hope to run the whole hospital with fully fledged theatres, medical wards and obstretics and gynaecology.

“The process has taken some time because we started work in 2009 and it has taken nearly four years but have done it all ourselves. We are very, very excited and absolutely thrilled to bits to achieve something like this 10,000 miles away with a population of three million people.

“It is not easy but has been very rewarding and will help the local population so much.

“We couldn’t have done it without the help of hundreds of people all over the country from north to south.

“We are grateful to everybody who donated a penny.”

The team has spent £2 million, but that is 50 per cent less than if they had used contractors.

For more information visit http://www.mdauk.co.uk.

FACTFILE;

•  The appeal by the T&A was originally launched under the South Asian Earthquake Appeal.
•  We started the fund with our own donation of £1,000 and asked readers to donate as much as they could to help the disaster victims find a new future.
•  Within a week of the appeal launch £10,000 had been raised, with donations flooding in from Bradford businesses and members of the public.
•  One pensioner sent in £300 anonymously, along with a note reading: “These are my savings. I do not want anyone to know.”
•  The money continued to mount up, with donations from groups, individuals and companies pouring in.
•  Eventually, it was decided that two heads were better than one and the T&A appeal joined forces with the Lord Mayor of Bradford’s Kashmir Earthquake Appeal Trust – set up by the then Lord Mayor, Councillor Valerie Binney – to support a scheme to build a new, and desperately-needed, hospital for the region