The pediatric hematology- oncology department of Dr. Sheikh Hospital is the only diagnosis and treatment center for kids suffering from various blood disorders and malignant diseases in the provinces of central, northern and south Khorasan. Additionally, numerous patients from neighbor provinces such as Semnan, Golestan, Sistan Baluchestan, and also regional countries, specially Afghanistan and Iraq refer to this center for receiving diagnosis, treatment, and consultation services.
The academic board members include: three physicians; specialists in hematology-oncology and one fellowship of hematology-oncology with academic degrees of assistant and associate professor.
This division includes 36 beds with 4 isolated beds, 10 emergency beds, and the outpatient chemotherapy unit with 10 active beds, outpatient surgery room for performing diagnosis procedures under anesthesia including the BM Biopsy, BMA, and LP models. Also the pediatric bone marrow transplant division with 5 active beds at the Montaserieh Hospital site is a subdivision of this unit. All beds are regularly active.
Different student groups including medical (trainees and interns, pediatric residents) and nursing students and students from other related fields are present at this unit.
The pediatric nephrology, pediatric surgery and the PICU divisions operate as educational and referral units alongside this unit at the Dr. Sheikh Hospital.
An average number of 8 to 10 new malignant cases, 5 ITP cases, 3 to 5 new blood disease cases such as various anemia and … for an age spectrum consisting of children and babies to 16 year olds are hospitalized every month.
Generally, this unit has a high potential for attracting post graduate students in the field of general medicine, pediatricians / internists for enrolling in 1 to 6 month courses with the purpose of teaching “the principles of diagnosing and treating common pediatric blood diseases”, especially for countries such as Afghanistan which can use the common Persian language to facilitate the information communication processes. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan, due to factors such as distance, and complications in obtaining visas and different expenses (housing, transportation, drugs, hospitalization, etc.), sick children may not receive the appropriate and timely treatments and may even leave the treatment incompletely. The existence of referral center(s) in the original countries that have communications with our academic centers and attending and completing the therapeutic courses that can facilitate the treatment process of patients can have major important impacts.

Proposed training program:
1- Attending training classes taught by professors
2- Holding student conferences and journals (at least once a month)
3- Attending daily visits
4- Being present at the clinic – 3 times a week
5- Performing at least 10 bone marrow aspirations or BMA, 10 intrathecal injections or IT, and 2 cases of successful bone marrow biopsy confirmed by the head of the department
6- Attendance at chemotherapy rooms and preparing and injecting chemotherapy drugs under the supervision of the staff nurse- 3 days a week
7- Four eight-hour watch shifts a month at the hematology emergency division under the supervision of the senior resident with the purpose of becoming acquainted with hematology-oncology emergencies
8- An introduction of the method of preparing and interpreting environmental blood smears under the supervision of the respective clinical pathology lab staff member
9- Introduction to the method of preparing and interpreting bone marrow samples under the supervision of the respective clinical pathology lab staff member
10- Attendance at the bone marrow transplant division (2-3 days) in order to become generally acquainted with the transplant procedure and the cares needed for the transplant patient
11- Participation in educational meetings including tumor board, radiology conferences, introduction to interesting cases, mortality report, journal club, grand round, etc. according to the training program of the department and group
12- Participation in research plans according to the opinion of the hematology group.