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 Health Dr Mansoor Rizvi, Executive Director NICVD Dr Tahir Saghir and others concerned.
The chief minister said that he was interested in upgrading and improving Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and KIHD by providing them with 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 Health and Executive Director 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 the establishment of a Cardiac Emergency Center at Baldia Town. In the establishment of the cardiac facility, the NICVD team would help the Health Department. The Executive Director 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 whole NICVD system every year, he told and added the NICVD provides free-of-cost treatment to over 500,000 patients coming 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 per year to over 4000. Surgical mortality has been reduced from 23 per cent to 4 per cent by creating a heart team to monitor the patients going through the surgery. The NICVD has also introduced off-pump bypass surgery.
The Percutaneous Transluminal Mitral Commissurotomy (PTMC) is a minimally invasive procedure that is used to treat patients with mitral stenosis. The NICVD has successfully done a total of 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.
