The Caretaker Sindh Chief Minister Justice (Retd) Maqbool Baqar has directed the Health Department to establish three Chest Units at Baldia, Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases (KIHD) and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital in consultation with the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and Mayor Karachi.
He issued these directives while presiding over a meeting of NICVD at CM House here Friday.
The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Dr Fakhre Alam, Secretary of Health Dr Mansoor Rizvi, Executive Director NICVD Dr Tahir Saghir and others concerned.
The chief minister said he wanted to upgrade and improve Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and KIHD by providing the necessary facilities. “Both the facilities belong to KMC, and I have discussed the matter with Mayor Karachi Murtaza Wahab,” he said and directed the Secretary of Health and Executive Director of NICVD to consult with Mayor Karachi and set up Chest Pain units at both hospitals. Meanwhile, we are working to improve their overall services, he added.
The CM also directed the Health Department to speed up work on establishing a Cardiac Emergency Center at Baldia Town. The NICVD team would help the Health Department establish the cardiac facility.
The Executive Director of NICVD told the CM that NICVD has 36 units, 10 hospitals and 26 chest pain units. Now, over 2.3 million patients are being treated in the NICVD system every year; he added that the NICVD provides free-of-cost treatment to over 500,000 patients from Balochistan and 200,000 from Punjab. Under the Sindh government policy, he said the patients possessing the CNIC of Pakistan were eligible to avail of services in the facility free of cost.
The annual statistics of 2002 show that the OPD in the NICVD system in 2022 was recorded at 576,838, emergency at 641,246, Echocardiography 127,211, ICD & CRT (devices) 134, TPM 1,229, PPM 1,381 and admissions 88,296, he expressed.
“The number of cardiac surgeries increased from 1100 patients annually to over 4000. Surgical mortality has been reduced from 23 to 4 per cent by creating a heart team to monitor the patients undergoing the surgery. The NICVD has also introduced off-pump bypass surgery. The Percutaneous Transluminal Mitral Commissurotomy (PTMC) is a minimally invasive procedure for treating patients with mitral stenosis. The NICVD has done 2,422 PTMC Procedures at NICVD Karachi, Tando Mohammad Khan and Sukkur”.
The chief minister directed the NICVD administration to improve the facilities and services at all their hospitals and units. The provincial government would keep supporting the NICVD.
