OUR JOURNEY
Founded in the year 2005, motivated by the lack of care of children with disabilities, Akbar Kare institute aims to improve the lives of children and their families who have lifelong disabilities due to Cerebral palsy, Spina bifida, and other developmental conditions, irrespective of their wealth, class or creed. We do our best to do this in a respectful, consistent, and friendly manner with all the participants, the child carers, and the Aki therapy team. Akbar Kare Institute is a free service provider, no family pays any money for any service which includes physiotherapy sessions for rehabilitation of child, / preschool educational sessions, provision of assistive devices (appliances), orthotics and prosthetics services.
In 2022 Akbar Kare Institute completed its 18th year as a Family Centered Rehabilitation Centre. However, the seeds for this endeavor were planted many years before in the mind of the mother of a son with Cerebral Palsy. This son, now a man, Akbar Saifullah Khan, is 40 years of age. When Akbar was 3 years old his mother was introduced to a pediatric physiotherapist, Yvonne Frizzell. Newly arrived in Pakistan with her husband from the UK, they became friends, and Akbar was seen regularly by her for physiotherapy and for playtime with her own son and daughter. They lived on the next road to the family in Peshawar.
When Akbar was 8yrs, the Frizzell family left Pakistan to live in Ireland. Six months later, Akbar joined them in Ireland and spent the next 13 years at school and at an adult center whilst living with this family. These life-changing events are rarely planned but through the years the two families have become firm friends and at 21yrs of age it was time for Akbar to return to Pakistan.
Mrs Saifullah Khan knew it was now possible to fulfil her long-held ambition of helping local children with disability. She invited Yvonne to join her in starting a Therapy center to give children some of the opportunities Akbar had enjoyed in Ireland. Akbar Kare Institute is the result. Akbar’s extended family, initially through the “Saifullah Foundation for Sustainable Development”, have funded and supported AKi, allowing for its growth and development.
The funding grew as the service grew and now a group of companies support the work. This has fully enabled all physiotherapy, aids, adapted furniture, and some essential medication for epilepsy to be provided free without any payment by children or their families. In many cases, surgery has been essential and supported whilst being beyond the basic remit of the organisation. In 2016 a 5-year MoU was signed with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
This enabled AKi to develop a new orthotic service and most recently in 2019 set up a dedicated orthotic workshop. This was established for us and funded by ICRC and they help in training our orthotics individuals. They have also supported international training opportunities that have given us the specialized assessment skills to identify neurological atypical development by the time a baby is 3 months of age. This means we can start Early Intervention to help parents help their babies develop well.
We have a national profile from our work presenting at Conferences and conducting workshops from Lahore to Karachi and Mrs Frizzell has presented AKi’s work in Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Ireland and the UK. The ethos of good care guides us and our aim is to improve both the lives of children with disabilities and the lives of their families.