KARACHI, May 15: Hospitals and other health care centres scattered across the city on Tuesday received a number of patients as the staff and doctors also attended their offices.

Staff at these hospitals including Civil Hospital Karachi, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, National Institute of Child Health, National Institute of Cardio-Vascular Diseases, Sindh government hospitals of Korangi and Liaquatabad, Children’s Hospital North Karachi, and others attended the offices in full strength.

Surgeries, which had to be deferred were re-scheduled and all operation theatres remained occupied, administrators of the hospitals told APP.

“We expect to have steady burden for the next few days as the surgeries which could not take place due to absence of health care providers as well as patients during the past three days have to be accommodated,” a senior cardiac surgeon said.

Apart from patients residing in Karachi, a significant number of sufferers belonging to other parts of the province as well as those from Balochistan, mainly referral cases, also visited the Out Patient Departments of these hospitals.

Sughra Bibi from Sibi said she had arrived in Karachi on Friday but could not seek required medical assistance till Monday.

The patients appealed that plight of resource-less must not be ignored as they simply could not afford visiting private sector hospitals. They observed that special consideration must be extended towards people with ailing conditions as there could be every possibility that denial or even delayed medical intervention might cause irreversible loss to health and/or death.—APP