Tariq Saeed
Peshawar
Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mahmood Khan on Thursday inaugurated a state of the art COVID-19 Hospital in the Provincial metropolis in the wake of fast spreading Corona virus and rising number of patients needing hospitalization. The establishment of the hospital is aimed at ensuring specialized treatment facilities for Corona patients in the province. The hospital has been set up as a model one based on global SOPs and guidelines, and is fully equipped with ventilators, monitors, oxygen, ABG machines, infusion pumps and other necessary equipments to manage hypoxemic respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, septic shock and other complications resulting from COVID-19.
Initially the hospital consists of 58 beds which will enhance to 110 within a month period. It consists of 37 Isolation beds, 16 High Dependency beds and five Intestine Care beds. Addressing as chief guest the inaugural ceremony, the Chief Minister termed the establishment of the hospital as milestone achievement of the provincial government to enhance the treatment facilities for Corona patients and said that it will reduce burden of COVID-patients on the tertiary care hospitals of the provincial metropolis.
Touching upon the efforts of his government to strengthen the health infrastructure to effectively deal with corona pandemic, Mahmood Khan remarked that initially the capacity of health system in the province to deal with Corona patients was very weak but the provincial government had been working day and night and now the overall capacity of public sector hospitals has been enhanced considerably adding that efforts are still underway under well devised plan to further strengthen the capacities of these hospitals.
He said that the provincial government was trying to turn the Corona challenge into an opportunity to strengthen the health infrastructure of the province and result oriented steps are being taken to this effect. “Initially the total Corona testing capacity in the province was just forty test per day which has now been increased to 4000 test per days” , Mahmood Khan stated adding that in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority, the provincial government is making efforts to operationalized another 210 bedded COVID hospital in Peshawar.
In his address the Chief minister lauded the role of National Coordination Committee and National Command and Operation Centre in the prevailing Corona situation and said that under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan, these forums have played very effective role to take all the federating units on board in order to devise an effective strategy and get it implemented to contain the mass scale outbreak of the pandemic.
“In the prevailing Corona situation the government is making efforts on two different fronts simultaneously”, Mahmood Khan remarked adding that one the one hand the government has to take steps to contain the outbreak of the pandemic and on the other it has to take measures to protect the people specially the vulnerable segments of society from hunger, and the government is trying to maintain a balance between both the situation.
