10 March 2005	Thursday	28 Muharram 1426

KARACHI, March 9: Health management boards will be established in all government hospitals in the province. This was decided at a meeting, chaired by Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad, held at the Governor's House on Wednesday.

The governor instructed that initially a management board should be set up in the Civil Hospital Karachi, as a pilot project, and after its success, this experience should be introduced in other hospitals.

The 100-member management board will have equal participation from the government and private sectors. The governor asked that active and dynamic people of good repute should be inducted in the board to ensure a better community participation and provision of excellent healthcare services to the masses.

He asked the provincial health adviser to chalk out separate 'health plans' for each district of the province. He said that in these plans it should be ensured that besides procuring new facilities, the existing ones would also be fully utilized.

Dr Ibad said that the data regarding out-of-order logistics of the hospitals be collected and these assets should be repaired and reactivated. He took a strong note of a report that 75 per cent of the power generators, provided to basic health centres of the province 12 years ago, were still kept packed and unused.

The meeting also decided to set up a modern accident and emergency centre in the Civil Hospital at Chand Bibi Road. This nine-storied centre would be set up with a cost of Rs500 million and completed within two years.

Referring to the establishment of modern emergency centre at the Civil Hospital Karachi, the governor said that similar centres should be set up in other parts of the city according to their population ratio. These centres should be established preferably in the existing big government hospitals, he added.

CHK Medical Superintendent Prof Saeed Qureshi briefed the meeting on the emergency centre plan and said that the centre would have a covered area of 29,000 square feet. It would have a two-story basement for medical record, stores and support services.

The ground floor, divided into trauma and non-trauma sections, would cater need of all emergency patients brought there. It would also have facilities of radiology, ultrasound, CT scan, laboratories and blood bank.

The first floor will house both medical and surgical intensive care units and eight operating rooms. The second and third floor would be reserved for car parking, with capacity for 160 vehicles.

Arrangements for general surgery, vascular surgery, maxillo-facial surgery, cardio-thoracic surgery, neuro-surgery, ophthalmology, and head and neck surgery facilities would be available at fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth floor. The ninth floor would house the faculty, while on the roof there would be arrangements for helipad.

Ishratul Ibad asked the officials concerned to initiate this project during the current year and submit its completed PC-1 by April 15. He said that the Sindh government would soon release funds for this vital project.

He also instructed that hospital-waste disposal system and a laundry would also be made the part of this project. He said that all the facilities in this project should be state-of-the-art, and fully aligned with technical and environmental needs.

Senior Provincial Minister Syed Sardar Ahmed, Adviser Health Faisal Malik, Adviser Information Salahuddin Haider, Chief Secretary Mohammad Aslam Sanjrani, Principal Secretary Brig (retd) Akhtar Zamin, Additional Chief Secretaries Ghulam Sarwar Khero and Saleem Khan, Secretary Information Mehtab Rashdi, VC Dow Medical University Prof (Dr) Masood Hamid and other senior officials attended the meeting. -PPI