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| October 20, 2005 | Thursday | Ramzan 15, 1426 |
54 serious patients airlifted to Lahore
LAHORE, Oct 19: As many as 54 seriously injured patients from different quake-hit areas were brought to Lahore PAF Base by two Fokker flights of the Pakistan Navy on Wednesday.
A PAF Fokker plane that operated twice on Wednesday brought 33 and 21 patients to Lahore, respectively. The first batch of 33 patients comprised 19 men, 12 women and six children.
All the 54 patients were taken to the Combined Military Hospital for treatment.
In all, five flights had so far airlifted 128 patients since Oct 12.
It is learnt that the CMH had started shifting these patients to civil hospitals. The CMH had shifted 36 patients to the Mayo Hospital, 34 patients to the Services Hospital and patients to the Jinnah Hospital.
Services Hospital MS Dr Riaz Chaudhry said 34 earthquake victims, airlifted to Lahore on Wednesday, were brought to the hospital after their registration at the CMH. He said that most patients had been admitted to orthopaedic wards and operations were being performed on them.
He said these patients were being provided all healthcare facilities free of cost. He said the hospital had reserved 400 beds for the injured coming from Mansehra, Balakot, Muzaffarabad, Bagh and other areas.
Patients Muhammad Akram, Umer, Abdul Raheem, Shaheen Bibi, Barkat Bibi, Zainab Sohail and others said that they were being facilitated by the hospital administration, while their attendants were also supplied meal and other facilities by the hospital.
Fatima Jinnah Medical College/Ganga Ram Hospital principal Prof Akbar Chaudhry said the hospital had so far received 26 quake victims, who came on their own. He said some four patients had so far been discharged.
Prof Chaudhry said that the hospital had reserved 250 beds for the quake-hit victims, while it was working to arrange 250 more beds to accommodate the maximum number of patients.
Answering a question, he said the patients, who were being discharged, were also being provided cash for travelling back to their home towns.
He said some social issues were also being created because many patients’ all relatives had died and they had no place to go. “A woman patient, who was discharged yesterday, said that she had no relatives and no money to go anywhere,” he said.
In this situation, he suggested, the government should arrange buildings to accommodate such destitutes. He suggested that the government could use its abundant buildings, schools and colleges’ buildings and even under-construction plazas, where construction work had stopped.
King Edward Medical College/ Mayo Hospital principal Prof Mumtaz Hasan held a meeting of senior professors and decided that the Mayo Hospital would increase the bed strength from 500 to 1,000 for the earthquake victims.
The meeting finalized 22 teams of doctors, who would serve the patients round-the-clock.
Meanwhile, the Punjab Institute of Mental Health (PIMH) has reserved 500 beds for general surgical patients to be shifted to the hospital.
PIMH executive director Brig Dr Saeed A Akhtar (retired) said the hospital had earlier reserved 150 beds but now it increased its strength to 500 in view of the expected influx of large number of patients from Rawalpindi.
He said doctors, surgeons and other staff had been assigned duties. He said these patients would be provided all facilities in addition to treatment and medicines.
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