MULTAN, June 14: The outpatient department (OPD) of the under-construction building of the Multan Institute of Cardiology is likely to start serving the area people from the next month.

This was stated by MIC project director Dr M.A. Cheema while talking to Dawn here.

He said diagnostic facilities of ECG, ecocardiography, X-rays and bio-chemistry would be available at the institute’s OPD. He said computerized record of each patient examined at the department would be maintained while free medicines would also be provided to the deserving patients at the institute’s pharmacy.

However, he said, emergency services would not be available at the OPD until the institute became fully operative by June 2006. “The emergency services will be of no use without having proper arrangements for carrying out angiography and surgery,” Dr Cheema added.

The MIC project (PC-I) was approved in January last year by the ECNEC while physical work on the site was launched in June 2004 after the revision of PC-I in April the same year. The cost of the project had been estimated at Rs971.307 million. Of the amount, Rs539.269 million would be spent on the MIC building, including 120-room doctors’ hostel and 137-room nurses’ hostel, and Rs 432.038 million on the purchase of equipment, machinery and furniture.

As Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvaiz Elahi was taking keen interest in early initiation of work on the MIC, it was reportedly decided to design its building on the same architectural pattern as that of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology instead of wasting time on having a separate building plan.

“Official architects had claimed that drawings of the proposed MIC project would take at least six months,” said Punjab Communication and Works Department superintending engineer Syed Iqbal Haider.

The MIC would be a 201-bed cardiac health facility having five operation theatres and separate paediatric surgical and cardiology wards. The institute was being built on the premises of former commissioner’s house sprawling over 61 kanals (nearly eight acres). The house had been vacant since the abolition of the post of commissioner after the introduction of the district government system in 2001.

The C&W department SE said the construction of MIC was being carried out in a record period despite the fact that its total covered area was 193,000sqf compared to the 230,038sqf of the MIC. “The construction of PIC in Lahore had taken seven years while the structure of the MIC building has almost been erected within a year and it would start functioning wholly by the middle of next year,” SE Haider said.

However, the speedy construction work had taken its toll on the building cost as in the second revision of the PC-I conducted in March this year the cost of the building had to be adjusted upward from initially estimated Rs539.269 million to Rs647.597 million. Consequently, he said, the allocation for the purchase of equipment and other material had to be cut down by Rs110 million.

Dr Cheema told the meeting that the MIC had been given an autonomous status and the provincial government would soon announce a board of management for it. Although the institute had issued appointment letters against 116 posts of various categories after advertising the vacancies and conducting interviews of the applicants, only 65 of them had joined so far, he said.

He said during the recruitment process it transpired that the qualified and experienced professionals were reluctant to be appointed in a relatively backward area. But the chief minister was eager to see the institute providing services effectively to the people of southern Punjab and, therefore, he had approved lucrative packages, including share in practice for the professionals who would opt for serving at the MIC.

“A monthly salary of a professor working at the MIC will not be less than Rs150,000 under the revised package,” he said.

The MIC, he said, would provide quality heart care facilities not only in south Punjab but the people of the adjoining districts of Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP would also derive benefit from its services.

He said the institute would also impart postgraduate education and training to the medical, surgical, nursing and paramedical staff.