After almost two years we have the feeling that the engine is running. Our first child (Aslam), a two-years old with thalassemia, has undergone transplantation 8 days ago at the National Institute of Blood Disease of Karachi. Our team is expanding: Roberta Caraher, Pietro Sodani and Cristiano Gallucci participated in a short training session on bone marrow transplantation support care for nurses held at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).

July 9, 2008. To get from Islamabad to Lahore I booked a taxi, it’s quicker and less expensive. I am curious to make this trip and enjoy some site-seeing, a little less than 400 km of well-kept comfortable highway.

The Children’s Hospital is a large clinical facility with more than 400 beds with all major paediatric medical and surgical subspecialties. The oncology service is very active with 350 new cases a year, mostly leukaemias (50%), but also lymphomas, wilms tumors, retinoblastomas, neuroblastomas, germ cell tumors, bone tumors and soft-tissue sarcomas.