The Saby Charitable Foundation has been implementing large-scale projects in Kazakhstan for 23 years. Since its foundation in 2002, our priority areas have been education and medicine.

In all our initiatives, we try to look deeper — to explore the so-called “blind spots” that exist in any system, in any state. These are the areas that are little talked about, that remain out of focus for a long time — but at the same time, they determine the quality of a person’s life.

There are such blind spots in medicine, too. One of them is emergency pediatric surgery. It became the starting point for launching the foundation’s new project.

 

What we saw

I started this project in 2018, after my team and I analyzed the reasons for the increase in childhood disability in the country. And it turned out that one of the key reasons is the untimely provision of emergency surgical care. The child is admitted to the hospital — but either they don’t have time to perform the operation, or the conditions do not meet the standards. The result is complications, long recovery, and in some cases — lifelong disability.

The numbers speak for themselves:

  • 98,254 cases of childhood disability were registered in Kazakhstan in 2021,
  • 104,260 in 2022,
  • 109,496 in 2023.

The growth rate over three years was 11.4%, and more than 68% of these cases were among school-age children.

It became obvious to me: this problem had remained in the shadows for a long time. It is not visible from the outside, but it destroys lives.

 

What we did

This is how the Emergency Pediatric Surgery project was born, which we started with the foundation team.

We approached the task comprehensively, as in all our initiatives:

  • opened five modern departments in Almaty, Semey, Aktau, Petropavlovsk and Atyrau;
  • organized convenient reception areas and entrances for ambulances;
  • removed partitions, accelerated hospitalization routes;
  • installed laminar flow systems — special ventilation technologies that ensure sterile air in operating rooms;
  • thanks to this, doctors can now perform up to 10 operations a day instead of 3-4, as was the case before;
  • equipped departments with high-tech equipment: from laparoscopic units to monitoring and resuscitation systems;
  • conducted training for doctors together with international experts so that not only the walls and equipment, but also the knowledge corresponded to the best world practices.

 

What did this give

Thousands of children have already received help on time.

And most importantly, they avoided serious consequences that previously seemed inevitable.

Today, in the regions of Kazakhstan, doctors perform complex operations that were previously possible only in Astana or Almaty. The quality of care has increased. Availability has expanded. And this is just the beginning.

 

What’s next?

We are not just closing an infrastructure gap — we are bringing to light what has long remained in the shadows.

Emergency pediatric surgery is not an abstract medical topic, it is a question of justice. It is about every child — no matter where they were born — getting a chance to live without pain, without limitations, without fear.

We have already started this path. And we are not going to stop.

My goal is for such departments to appear in every region of Kazakhstan.

So that the phrase “we didn’t make it in time” will never be heard in a children’s hospital again.