HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has said that it is for people to decide whether they want metro buses and dry trees being offered by opponents or hospitals and free treatment of life-threatening diseases being provided by the PPP.

“With elections in sight, PML-N says it has provided metro buses to people in Punjab while Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf boasts of planting trees. But we have established hospitals where people get otherwise expensive treatment free of charge without any discrimination,” said Bilawal at inaugural ceremony of a satellite unit of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) here on Sunday.

“As we serve masses throughout our tenure, the so called big parties remain embroiled in a long drawn out fight on Grand Trunk road,” he said.

Dressed in cream coloured shalwar kameez and an ajrak draped over his shoulder, Bilawal said that he was glad to inaugurate another NICVD satellite facility in Hyderabad after opening its units in Larkana and Tando Mohammad Khan.

He said that as NICVD expanded its services to major cities of Sindh, he hoped every resident would soon be able to get free treatment at his doorstep.

He said that he was pleased to see the poor patients getting advantage of the facilities which were hitherto available only to the affluent and praised Sindh chief minister, health minister and NICVD executive director Dr Nadeem Qamar for providing the facility to the poor.

“By establishing heart hospitals we have proved yet again that we repair hearts not break them,” he said.

“Our hearts were indeed torn apart when a dictator hanged my grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and my mother was assassinated during the rule of another dictator. Yet we not only take care of ourselves but Pakistan and its people as well,” he said.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that NICVD facility in Hyderabad said the areas where NICVD’s outreach was difficult would be connected with mobile services at taluka level.

NICVD Sukkur unit would be the second largest facility where maximum angiography tests would be carried out after Karachi, he said.

SIUT would be set up in Hyderabad, Sukkur and Larkana, cancer facility would be introduced across Sindh in collaboration with Jinnah Postgraduate Medi­cal Centre and a state-of-the-art hospital would be established either in Sukkur or Larkana, he said.

He sought the party chairman’s permission to change name of NCIVD to Sindh Institute of Cardio­vascular Diseases (SICVD) and urged media to project government’s works in social sector.

Dr Nadeem Qamar said that 18,000 patients with cardiac problems were attended by NCIVD at its mobile containers placed at six different locations in Karachi during last six months and of them 1183 were those who had suffered cardiac arrest and were accordingly shifted to NCIVD. Karachi needed 25 chest pain units and so did other parts of Sindh, he said.

Sindh Minister for Health Dr Sikandar Mandhro said that Sindh government was committed to provide mother and child care facilities to every citizen. DADU: Speaking at a programme commemorating martyrs of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in Khairpur Nathan Shah twon, some 50 kilometres from here, on Sunday, the PPP chairman said he was ready to take on all challenges like his mother and grandfather.

Speaking through hologram technology, he said his mother had challenged terrorists and their facilitators and she also never bowed to pressures for handing over the country to dictators.

He said that PPP activists from Karachi to Kashmore would converge on Ghrahi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto on Dec 27 to participate in the 10th death anniversary programme of their slain leader.

Earlier, PPP MNAs, MPAs and local leaders also spoke at the gathering.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2017