ISLAMABAD, July 21: The management of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) is working on a draft proposal for establishment of a multi-billion rupees health tower.

The new structure to be located on the premises of the hospital will replace the old buildings, it has been learnt reliably.

The move comes at a time when the hospital’s management has learnt through a recent technical study of the hospital that in another eight years Islamabad’s biggest public sector hospital, spreading over an entire sector (G-8/3), will not be able to cope with the load of the patients.

The hospital has been providing services to millions of patients coming from all the provinces for the last 26 years. Pims has an ample space for expansion.

“The hospital management is working on a proposal for the expansion of the hospital and this draft proposal will be submitted to the Ministry of Capital Administration and Development (CAD) by next week,” a senior official from the hospital administration told Dawn.

According to a few excerpts from the proposal, the official added, complete revamping of the whole premises would be carried out with the assistance of the urban planning wing of the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

“The help of Capital Development Authority urban planning department will be sought for the whole sector of G-8/3, where the new buildings will be established along with the multi-storey health tower,” added the official.

The hospital premises, he said, had a number of buildings, including the housing colony for the employees and doctors’ residences, but that will not be disturbed.

It is pertinent to mention that in 2007, during the tenure of then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, a plan was prepared to construct a 16-storey 500-bed medical health tower on the premises of the hospital at a cost of around Rs2.3 billion. The tower was to complete in three years time.

The official said secretary of the CAD ministry, Israr Rauf, would be given a briefing on the project. He has already been informed that the hospital was getting congested with every passing day for both indoor and outdoor patients.

Another official of the Capital Administration and Development ministry added: “This time we will look for a sustainable model for the hospital since the budget constraints have already hampering the smooth working of different departments.”

While sharing the data of the hospital’s load with this reporter, the ministry’s official said: “On a daily basis, Pims is catering to around 5,000 OPD patients and within a span of one to two years this load of patient will cross the mark of seven thousand because of increasing population and missing health facilities in catchments area of the hospital.”

The official said the new health tower would be established in a manner that it also helped in meeting the finances of the hospitals, routine procedures and budgetary needs.