KARACHI, Sept 26: The governing body of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases on Thursday approved the enhancement of the trust fund from Rs300 million to Rs340 million.

It also okayed an increase in government grant-in-aid from Rs115 million to Rs135 million to raise the salaries of staff and recruit more doctors, nurses, paramedics and administrative staff.

The governing body meeting was attended by the federal health minister, Dr Abdul Malik Kasi, the NICVD executive director, Dr Azhar Masood A. Faruqui, the federal health secretary, Ejaz Rahim, and others.

Later, the federal health minister inaugurated a nuclear cardiology unit completed at a cost of Rs35 million from the NICVD’s own resources. The unit has a dual-head gamma camera with highly advanced imaging capability. The machine is capable of carrying out Thallium and other isotope scans of the heart in less than half the conventional equipment’s time.

Speaking at a press briefing, Dr Kasi said the NICVD was an overutilized health facility, which treated more patients every day than it was equipped to deal with.

He said the government had reached an agreement with the Islamic Development Bank under which the financial institute would provide Rs1.6 billion in three years to raise the number of beds in the hospital from 370 to 800.

He said another angiography unit at the NICVD would begin functioning within three weeks. Likewise, an out-patient department building, whose construction had been started the previous year, would be completed by December.

“The government is also constructing a musafir khana and a mosque for the patients who come from Balochistan and the interior of Sindh to the NICVD,” he said.

He appreciated the generous contribution of philanthropists, particularly the Memon and Chinioti communities and the traders from Delhi, for making a large number of significant health projects possible at the NICVD.

Dr Kasi spoke about the recently implemented health policy which aimed at bringing health services to the rural areas of the country where they were nearly non-existent.

The NICVD executive director, Dr Faruqui, said all the units inaugurated lately — the three coronary care centres, one emergency centre and one out-patient department — had been done with the contributions by philanthropists.

He said that over the past 25 years the strength of the staff had been unchanged while the workload of the NICVD had increased manifold. “There are about 500 permanent staff at the NICVD and around 125 people who work on a daily wages basis. With the enhanced grant-in-aid we intend to increase the strength of the permanent staff from 500 to 900 and the strength of the daily wages staff from 125 to 175. Besides, the salaries of the existing staff would also be increased.”

When the federal health minister was asked why the government did not provide so much grant to the NICVD that it could get rid of the token money that poor patients had to pay, he threw up his hands in horror and said the health sector was a bottomless pit. “No matter how much you invest in this sector, it looks inadequately funded,” he observed.