KARACHI, June 3: The city government’s Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases (KIHD), the second cardiac care facility of the metropolis after the National Institute of Cardio-Vascular Diseases (NICVD), became functional on Friday. The institute, having 120 beds, would initially have an outpatient department (OPD), besides three laboratories and several diagnostic equipment for Electro-Cardio Gram (ECG), X-Rays, Exercise Tolerance Test (ETT), Echo Doppler studies, angiography, cardiac catheterization and angioplasty.

So far it does not have an emergency care unit. However, in a few years’ time it is likely to be transformed into a fully fledged cardiac institute, following the addition of an emergency unit and an inpatient department, according to sources.

The only stumbling block in the establishment of an emergency unit is the delay in the approval of an SNE (Sanctioned New Expenditure) document, which has been pending with the provincial government for more than a year.

As compared to the other hospitals of the city, the KIHD will be charging considerably less for the facilities provided and the tests carried out there. For instance, a patient having angiography at the new institute would be charged only Rs3,000, as compared to about Rs10,000 at the NICVD and Rs25,000 at the private ones.

Similarly, those having angioplasty at the KIHD would be charged Rs35,000 in case of one stent and Rs50,000 for double stents. A patient is charged at least Rs125,000 for single-stent angioplasty in other hospitals.

As far as OPD charges are concerned it would be only Rs50 (with ECG), while echo-cardiography and ETT tests would be conducted for Rs300 each. Already, one angioplasty and three angiography cases have been performed at the institute, according to sources.

Spread out over an area of 3.6 acres, the KIHD is located on the old campus of Karachi Medical and Dental College in Federal B Area’s block 16. It is the same place where a maternity home was inaugurated by Begum Nusrat Bhutto in 1974. The maternity home was later turned into an educational institution.

The institute, which would shortly be equipped with a thallium scanning unit, would be providing teaching/training facilities to the under- and postgraduate trainees, for which it would be affiliated with Karachi University as well as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan.

According to Dr Fayyaz Alam Siddiqui, who is the Nazim’s coordinator for health, Niamatullah Khan has allocated Rs15 million for the purchase of a thallium scanning unit for which a tender has already been floated. The governing body of the institute, he told Dawn,, had divided patients into three categories — private, general and those who would be treated from Zakat fund.

Asked whether or not the costly injection called ‘Streptokinase’ — required to be administered immediately after a cardiac event — would be provided to the patients, Dr Muhammad Khalid, the deputy director of KIHD, answered in the affirmative. He added that the injection would be administered strictly on needs basis and regardless of monetary considerations.

The City District Government Karachi, he said, had spent about Rs800 million on the project, adding that the amount was used for renovation of the old building and purchase of the required equipment.