KARACHI, April 4: The Dr Ziauddin Group of Hospitals has dedicated its 125-bed Kemari campus to providing free treatment facilities to the unaffording patients. The welfare hospital will start functioning from Friday.

The chairman of Ziauddin Group of Hospitals, Dr Asim Hussain, speaking at a press conference, said that because of the rising cost of health care, a large number of people were left deprived of medical treatment. The move to dedicate the Ziauddin Kemari Hospital as a free institution was part of the Trust’s mission towards this direction, he added.

Dr Asim Hussain dispelled the impression that private hospitals were merely money-making institutions. He said that on the contrary Ziauddin Medical University and Dr Ziauddin Group of Hospitals were parts of Dr Ziauddin Hospital Trust, a not-for-profit organization.

Mentioning details of the elaborate poor-patient-friendly package, Dr Asim said that the Kemari Hospital, besides offering free-of-cost medical and surgical consultation in all specialties, would also provide hospitalization, surgeries, operation theatre facilities, anaesthesia and normal and caesarean deliveries.

The following departments are currently functioning at the hospital: general surgery, general medicine, paediatrics, gynaecology & obstetrics, orthopaedics, cardiology, urology, neurosurgery, eye, ENT and chest medicine.

The package however does not include free specialized investigations and medicines. These two facilities would however be available on a cost-to-cost basis to the patients at the Kemari campus.

Moreover, according to Dr Asim, patients coming at the Kemari campus would be provided CT Scan and MRI facilities available at North Nazimabad and Clifton campuses at highly discounted rates.

Expressing the inability of the Trust to extend 100 per cent free treatment to the patients at Kemari, Dr Asim invited the support of philanthropists in initiating free supply of medicines to patients. He said average monthly expense of medicines per hospital bed was around Rs20,000.