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| October 18, 2005 | Tuesday | Ramzan 13, 1426 |
10,000 injured being shifted to Punjab
LAHORE, Oct 17: The federal government has informed Punjab that it will be shifting over 10,000 earthquake injured to the province’s tertiary care and district headquarters’ hospitals.
The Azad Kashmir government on the other hand has requested the provincial government to send 200 doctors to help it restore basic health infrastructure destroyed by the quake.
This was informed at a meeting chaired by Punjab health secretary Javed Malik at the Civil Secretariat on Monday. All tertiary care hospitals’ medical superintendents, director-general health services, Punjab, and additional secretaries attended the meeting.
The secretary said the patients would be shifted to Lahore by C-130 planes. Executive District Officer (Health) Dr Abdul Qayyum and Punjab Emergency and Ambulance Service project-director Dr Rizwan Naseer will receive the patients at the airport, register them before sending them to different institutions for treatment.
He said patients suffering from psychiatric trauma would be housed at the Punjab Institute of Mental Health.
The secretary directed the EDO (Health) to establish a temporary 100-bed hospital at the old Lahore airport to receive and accommodate patients there before categorising and shifting them to tertiary care hospitals.
The secretary said the Jinnah and Mayo hospitals should make arrangements to accommodate 1,000 patients each, while the Services Hospital should house 500 patients and other hospitals according to their capacity. He also wanted hospital managements to provide all facilities, including meals, to patients and their attendants.
As soon as the teaching hospitals’ capacity exhausted, the remaining injured would be shifted to district headquarters hospitals beginning from Lahore, Kasur, Okara, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala and Sargodha.
As there is emergency landing facility in Mianwali, patients would also be air-lifted there.
The Health Services DG has been asked to deploy surgeons at DHQ hospitals in and around Lahore.
The health secretary asked medical superintendents to send more doctors’ teams to devastated areas. Some medical superintendents, however, had reservations that how could they be able to treat patients if they were to spare doctors for deployment in Kashmir and the NWFP. The health secretary then asked them to make proper arrangements at their hospitals.
Jinnah Hospital medical superintendent Dr Zahid Pervaiz said the hospital had already sent two teams of doctors and paramedics to quake-hit areas.
He said the hospital had reserved 600 beds, including 200 at the Allama Iqbal Medical College gymnasium. He said another 100 beds could be added to two medical wards and an equal number in corridors.
Dr Pervaiz said that some 52 quake victims had so far been admitted to the hospital on individual basis out of whom 28 had been discharged.
LGH: Four more injured from Balakot reached the Lahore General Hospital, raising the total number of patients to 61.
LGH medical superintendent Dr Ejaz Sheikh said that so far 61 patients had been admitted to the hospital on individual basis out of whom 19 had been discharged.
He said the hospital was also providing patients and their attendants with warm clothes and other items of daily use as well as cash.
It is learnt that the Ittefaq Hospital and Ammar Medical Complex were also extending free treatment to the 10 and four patients, respectively, brought there by their relatives.
According to an Ittefaq spokesman, the hospital had also sent its medical teams to ravaged areas.
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