KARACHI, Dec 27: City Nazim Naimatullah Khan has given a final approval for the establishment of Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases.
Nazim Karachi and DCO Shafiqur Rehman Paracha were given a briefing at the city government’s head office by Prof Abdus Samad, Project Director of the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases. They were informed that heart diseases were the leading cause of death and disability around the world, while Pakistan had one of the highest cases of heart attack in the world.
While approving the project, the city Nazim said that though the city government was ready to invest in the project, all its expense could only be met with the help of philanthropists and donors.
Prof Samad said that the prevalence of coronary artery disease in Pakistan was probably as high as in the developed countries.
He highlighted that the coronary angiography data of Pakistani population showed more severe disease as compared to the USA as over 20 per cent patients were below 40 years of age.
According to the presentation, incidence of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) is also increasing proportionally and a study conducted by Prof Samad few years back showed their occurrence at 192/100,000 for adult males and 19/100,000 for females.
According to this report, there are only 6.2 monitored beds per million population of Pakistan. Whereas in the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, (NICVD) only one bed is available for 162 patients.
The city Nazim was informed that the NICVD was planned in 1965 for a population of about 4 million and its OPD was designed and constructed for 100 patients but now over 1,200 patients visit it every day.
To provide a facility to poor patients, the city government has decided to establish a heart disease institute in campus one of the Karachi Medical and Dental College situated in block-16 of F.B. Area.
The institute will be an state-of-the-art institute with all the diagnostic and therapeutic modalities including angiography, angioplasty with stents implantation, thallium scanning, ETT, echo doppler, CCU, closed and open heart surgery etc.
Besides providing diagnostic and treatment facilities to heart patients, this institute will also help impart training to undergraduate students of KMDC, postgraduate doctors, nursing and paramedical staff.
The institute will be established in three phases and the first phase will include construction of 18-bed cardiac emergency, 19-bed CCU, 80-bed indoor patients and diagnostic facilities.
The first phase of institute will become functional in nine months time after renovation and alterations in the KMDC’s old campus building at a cost of about Rs22.5 million. —PPI
