Special Initiatives

Sunehra Lamha refers to the "golden minute" - the first minute after birth. For the past decade, SHINE has been working to help reduce the neonatal mortality rate in Pakistan. Traditional birth attendants, midwives, physicians and medical students are trained to become master trainers and teach basic lifesaving skills to the rural population as part of the program. This program helps disseminate basic maneuvers that help bring a child's life out of risk at birth. To date, we have trained more than 2,700 medical professionals with over a 100 master trainers successfully.

SHINE is the first rural healthcare organization in Pakistan to digitize medical records and move towards paperless clinics. By digitizing all patient data, we aim to make strides in medical research and promote greater donor transparency.

SHINE Humanity's telemedicine initiative, launched in May 2025, bridges the healthcare gap in remote areas. With a midwife stationed at its clinic, patients connect with office-based physicians for care. This service particularly benefits female patients with gynecological issues, a demographic that often lacks access to specialist female doctors in these regions. By integrating telemedicine into our Electronic Medical Record System, we are ensuring that women, no matter their geographic location, can be served and their health managed and maintained in the long term.

The purpose of this project is to play a key role in providing healthcare to the disaster ridden flood affected individuals. SHINE initiated the step by assessing the infectious disease burden in the mother and child population with respect to the current climate change crisis in Pakistan. We are focusing primarily on Thatta, Sujawal and Malir Districts, where there is a higher burden of relocated flood affected populations. Mobile units were also set up to supplement our camps in the most impacted areas of Sindh. A primary health care doctor assisted by allied staff evaluates, diagnoses, and treats patients who otherwise would not have access to healthcare.

A Continued Medical Education program was established for the Medical and Allied staff of SHINE Humanity. In this program, specialists and physicians from the US and Pakistan conduct virtual education sessions for our staff so that they work in accordance with the uptodate practices that help deliver primary healthcare in a much more efficient manner. These sessions also allow expert physicians to assess the quality of care medical staff at SHINE provides to the local community.

Breast Cancer is one of the most common types of cancers globally, with more than 2 million cases a year. Barriers to healthcare access, low levels of awareness, and lack of early detection often result in late-stage diagnosis and poor prognosis. This year, SHINE launched a special initiative supporting breast cancer patients with customized treatment gowns. In an effort to boost the confidence of those undergoing treatment, these comfortable and functional gowns helped ensure ease in the treatment process. This initiative also reduced the burden on patients, who often have to purchase or stitch these gowns themselves and also propels our vision of providing every person the ability to live a healthy life.

Our public health internship program focuses on introducing the field of public health to students of various disciplines in Pakistan. Each month we take up 2 candidates from institutes around Karachi and broaden their perspective of medicine beyond diagnosis and treatment. The process involves programmatic proposal building, research writing workshops, public health in practice via community outreach and field visits to Sindh.

In 2020 SHINE Humanity started a Paani Project to tackle the root cause behind the outbreak of waterborne diseases in rural communities. The cause behind most gastrointestinal diseases which ail the local community lies in usage of contaminated water. Hence, To date we have installed 6 RO plants in various locations in interior Sindh, including Ibrahim Hyderi,Sujawal and Mirpur Khaas. Through robust collaborations with the local communities, we aim to provide clean drinking water to rural areas.