Karachi, January 8:
Sehat Kahani, Pakistan’s leading telemedicine platform, aiming to democratise healthcare in the country using innovative tech solutions, conducted its closing ceremony for its training program in partnership with USAID at Avari Hotel, Karachi.

This training program was tailored to help doctors at Sehat Kahani deliver the best possible services for a telemedicine platform. From communication to conflict resolution, the program was geared to improve the overall user experience for patients utilising Sehat Kahani services.

The training was conducted in two cohorts of Participants across two weeks. Each day the training catered to 100- 105 participants virtually, thereby aggregating 1030 participants, including 1000 doctors and 30 nurses post cessation of the training program.

The Closing Ceremony was attended by the participants and representatives of Sehat Kahani and USAID Pakistan. The event’s chief guest was Dr. Yasmeen Qazi, Senior Advocacy Advisor Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pakistan.

Dr. Sara Saeed Khurram, CEO & Co-Founder, Sehat Kahani, opened the floor for the ceremony. “During Covid-19, the app downloads went from 18,000 to 1 lac 40,000, with around 5% consultations for patients living abroad. 13 clinics were launched post-COVID outbreak, a helpline ‘Hello Dr’ with Lifebuoy soap launched, and tele-ICU training under UNDP and government-held.”

Mr. Usman Kirmani then proceeded to the floor and introduced the project. “USAID Small-Medium Enterprises (SME) aims to achieve economic growth using three components: (1) Business Enabling- by directly interacting with the government to help ease of business and enhance needed expertise. (2) Competitiveness Enhancement- studies to see how to support SMEs for business development in 7 priority sectors; ICT, Hospitality, Agribusiness & Processing, Textile, Light Engineering, Logistics, and Women-Owned SMEs, of which Sehat Kahani is an example. (3) Challenge Funding- provide competitive grants to SMEs. The grants allotted for a tenure of 5 years are 34 Million USD, of which 94 grants totalling 4.9 Million have been granted until now.”

Participants were then provided certificates for their participation in the training. Dr Yasmeen Qazi was the keynote speaker at the event. She mentioned that “Bangladesh targeted population growth as they identified is a major factor, and so they created awareness and empowered their women, which resulted in lesser births. Pakistan has neglected this aspect which is reflected in not teaching family planning and shutting down family planning centres in emergency situations such as floods, earthquakes and COVID-19, creating a bigger emergency in the form of unwanted births and abortions. There is also a lot of stigma related to this topic, provider and system biases, and supply-side issues when there are higher numbers of births in low resourced people. Behaviour change communication is necessary to turn knowledge into practice. Sehat Kahani and telemedicine can answer these concerns by training and creating awareness, as there is a need to keep hammering the message.”

 Dr Iffat Zaffar Aga closed the ceremony with, “As COVID-19 brought uncertainty in all our lives, it also brought some positive advances; one of these would be identifying the essential need of telemedicine. Sehat Kahani has emerged as a leading telemedicine platform in Pakistan. When it was hard to access primary health care physically, Sehat Kahani made it possible for people to access healthcare through 24/7 consultations with doctors. So, thanks to all the doctors, nurses and team of Sehat Kahani.”

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