KARACHI, Oct 7: One whole year after one of the few worst disasters in Pakistan’s history, hospitals and health care centres elsewhere in the country still echo with the screams of those who had sustained grave injuries and got their one, two or even more organs amputated.

While many towns and villages of the NWFP, Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir turned into graveyards of thousands of people, the surviving ones still feel and smell their beloved ones.

While observing the first anniversary of the disaster, medical organisations at Karachi feel that doctors, like other groups of professionals, have been able to manage the disaster, but still there is a long way to go.

We need to continue our efforts towards rescue and relief and ensure effective follow-ups to solace the quake-hit families and individuals who had lost their relatives, limbs, psyche and properties, said Prof Adibul Hassan Rizvi, Director of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT).

The SIUT has donated an ICU and a 12 station dialysis unit along with water treatment plant essential for quality dialysis to the Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences in Muzaffarabad which has been made functional very recently.

Prof Rizvi, who, along with a 25-member team, had rushed to the earthquake zone and reached there two days after the quake hit the area, said the dialysis and intensive care unit, an essential life-saving facility, at Muzaffarabad had completely been destroyed by the earthquake. As such, the SIUT found it appropriate to provide the deprived people with a new dialysis centre.

We have specially trained over a dozen medical personnel, including physicians, doctors and technicians, from Azad Kashmir in dialysis and intensive care at Karachi who have now started work at the SIUT-donated dialysis centre. The unit will now be run through a local board of the concerned citizens, judiciary figures and philanthropists, says Dr Rizvi with a sense of pride, adding that the facility will give confidence to the poor patients of the region.

What prompted the Karachi-based SIUT to rush to the earthquake affected areas from Karachi, Dr Rizvi said seismic catastrophes like earthquakes normally resulted in collapse of buildings where people were crushed under the rubble.

He and his team members had the consideration that crush injuries also caused severe muscles damage leading to acute renal failure, which could cause hyperkalemia (high potassium in the blood) due to breakdown of cells, and lead to cardiac arrest.

That was why SIUT chose to take a complete dialysis infrastructure at the doorstep of the disaster-hit area as it feared that other professionals, while handling bodies and rescuing survivors, will not be able to care about dialysis facility, adds Dr Rizvi.

He recalled that as soon as the SIUT team under his leadership arrived in the area, it was faced with the scenes of widespread devastation. The entire health infrastructure was shattered and hospitals and medical equipment destroyed as only a few buildings were left standing.

According to government officials, there were a total of 564 health centres and hospitals in Azad Kashmir and NWFP and 291 of them were completely destroyed by the quake. Another 74 sustained partial damage.“We spent three weeks in Mansehra, Abbotabad and Muzaffarabad which all were devastated by the quake. We set up temporary units with kidney dialysis machines, ventilators and laboratory facilities in each city and we treated about 250 people, including 25 children, for head injuries, trauma and kidney damage,” Dr Rizvi elaborated.

Dr Suhail Akhtar, General Secretary of the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association, Karachi, said that Oct 8 quake was the biggest tragedy having occurred in the history of Pakistan. The earthquake claimed thousands of lives, leaving the land so desolate that it seemed humanity had never existed there.

The catastrophe made the entire country unite and rise to the occasion irrespective of their potential and capabilities. The quake claimed about 150,000 lives and rendered over three million people homeless, but the spirit of our countrymen has never dampened. They came out with whatever they had to donate in cash and kind, besides extending their services and skills, he added.

Talking about PIMA activities, he said that it established three filed hospitals at Bagh, Muzaffarabad and Balakot and a hospital in Abbotabad for advanced surgery, in addition to sending mobile medical missions to far flung areas, including Kaghan, Alai and Neelum Valley.

The four PIMA centres received 410,752 as OPD patients, while 16,695 were admitted as indoor patients, who were provided with facilities of major and minor operations, normal deliveries, C-sections, x-rays, ultrasounds, lab-tests and ECGs.

Referring to medical services at Bagh by PIMA, he said that its field hospital was sharing almost 50 per cent of patients’ workload since earthquake and now it had been planned to ensure continued service in the affected areas by making the self-sustainable hospitals functional for the next two years.

We want to generate 40 per cent of he revenue by hospital through nominal charges from patients and 60 per cent revenue from philanthropists, he added, saying that if resources were not made available, it would be difficult for PIMA to run the hospitals in the quake-affected areas.