By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Oct. 29: The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has provided a financial grant of Rs. 40 million for the construction of a children’s hospital at Budhanilkantha.
The KMC has signed an agreement with the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health on Thursday to provide the grant for the construction of a modern hospital with specialists.

According to KMC, the assistance was provided to the hospital to ease the financial burden of the patients and their families from outside Kathmandu, who travel to the federal capital to receive treatment.
Speaking at the event, KMC Mayor Bidhya Sundar Shakya said, “Pediatricians are working together to prepare the infrastructure for the treatment of children. We are ready to extend our support to provide quality services at affordable prices.”

“As the country has already moved towards federalism, the obligation to travel to the federal capital for health care should be ended."
Both the federal and provincial governments should increase investment in the health sector to create an environment where people could get specialized health care in their own place, he stressed.
“As the federal capital, we have been investing more in the health sector considering the demand and requirement. And we are ready to invest more,” he added.

Dr. Bhagwan Koirala, Chairman of the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health, said that the purpose of building the hospital is to make specialized treatment available for all types of pediatric diseases within the country, in important and slightly different ways.

“We have launched a campaign to build this hospital to give concrete form to our collective dream of serving the public from Kathmandu by keeping pediatricians under one roof,” he said.
This campaign will be soon extended to every province, said Dr. Koirala.

“Our dream of building such a hospital in Kathmandu is going to be fulfilled with the financial aid of KMC. We will build a 200-bed hospital in Budhanilkantha,” he added.