The department provides treatment to 4500 patients and operates on over 1500 of them annually.

It conducts critical operations needed badly for survival for children with congenital malformations.

Paediatrics Surgery Depart-ment, country's largest paediatrics department at government level, opened in 1993.

Different foreign organisations and specialists, particularly from Australia and the UK, came forward with their supports and expertise. The government provided the department with a Laparoscope's to conduct Minimal Invasive Surgery.

And the personality who, with all dedication and compassion for ailing newborn babies, brought the department at its present position is Professor Dr. Tahmina Banu, the first female paediatrics urologist of the country.

The Paediatrics Surgery Department had been far more advanced in complicated surgeries involving posterior urethral valve, intussusceptions, ambiguous genitalia and cloacae.

Till 2004, the Paediatric Department of CMCH was the country's lone centre for the surgery of Posterior Urethral Valve (PUV) responsible for blocking urethral system.

Dr Tahmina procured Neonatal Cystoscope for conducting PUV surgery at her department in 1997. On an average some 350 PUV operations are done at the centre a year.

Paediatric patients from across the country and neighbouring Myanmar come here for treatment.

Dr Tahmina said that one, out of 150 children, suffers from PUV disorder that, if remains untreated, leads to renal failure and consequent death. Proper treatment in childhood can bring down the number of kidney patients significantly in the country, she said.

Use of betel leaf is an appreciable cost reducing process Professor Tahmina applies during colostomy. Colostomy is a temporary diversional opening (made on the belly of newborn babies without having anus) for passage of stools until the anal track is reconstructed through surgery after one or two months.

She said that after the colostomy is done they paste zinc oxide around the opening and place a betel leaf with a hole in the middle over it instead of daily disposable colostomy bag that costs Tk30 each.

Dr Tahmina was also a pioneering figure to conduct the Ambiguous Genitalia (sex disorder found in Hizra) determining sex and Estopia Vesicae at the CMCH.

She conducted strenuous surgery for Cloacae constructing separate urethral, genital, rectum and anal tracks of the patient.

Another treatment provided to the paediatric patients at the department is intussusceptions through hydrostatic reduction.

When the critical operation like Cloacae costs over Tk 1 lakh in a private hospital, it costs Tk 5,000 only for a patient at the department.

"The hospital provided me with 66 beds, officially only 15, while the departments of radiology and other diagnosis also helped me a lot," said Dr Tahmina.