MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider on Friday inaugurated the first independent Corona Isolation Hospital equipped with modern electro-medical apparatus and specialised staff.

The 50-bed facility has been set up in the newly constructed building of Officers’ Club along Bank Road in Muzaffarabad and would later be converted into a 100-bed cardiac hospital with angioplasty and angiography facilities.

Briefing the prime minister on the occasion, Dr Noman Manzoor Butt, co-incharge of the facility, said that it included intensive care and high-dependency units with six beds each as well as seven single bed and five double bed isolation rooms and two isolation wards with 10 beds each.

As many as 10 ventilators had initially been installed in the hospital, he said.

Dr Butt further informed the premier that 86-member staff, including doctors, paramedics and others, had initially been detailed in the facility on a rotation basis and the staff had been provided “complete safety kits”.

Speaking to reporters on the occasion, PM Haider asserted that the situation regarding Covid-19 was under control in AJK due to the “solid precautionary measures taken by his government”.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2020