KARACHI, Dec 26: The Civil Hospital has long felt the need for a self-contained and well-equipped centre where childbirth and related cases could be dealt with properly. Its wait is finally over.

On the last day of this year such a unit — called Department of Emergency Obstetrics and Gynaecology — will be inaugurated. The department will be opened by the first lady, Sehba Musharraf. Caesarean sections alone represent 17 per cent of all surgery cases performed at the hospital. These also represent more than 50 per cent of the cases involving women.

Opening of the department will, therefore, go a long way in meeting the healthcare needs of needy women who visit the hospital. The centre will also be instrumental in bringing down the maternal mortality rate of the hospital which is on the higher side.

The new unit is going to cost Rs15 million to build. The needed funds were collected by the 1977 class of Dow Medical College living in the US, the UK and Pakistan.

The new department will have five main sections — emergency room, emergency operation theatre, recovery room, labour room and high dependency unit. There will also be a school where midwives would be imparted training.

Two people behind the project — Dr S. Hamid Zaki and Dr Shaukat Malik — told Dawn the supply of midwives was crucial to the project because competent midwives were simply not available in the market. The school will not only provide trained midwives for the new department but will also help in meeting, to some extent, the needs of other healthcare centres.

According to Dr Zaki, the new project was the best gift the DMC’s class of 1977 could give to the Civil Hospital on the occasion of their silver jubilee. He said the idea of taking up the hospital’s one department by a graduating class and then rejuvenating it was born last year.

In 2001 the CHK’s central emergency operation theatre was rebuilt and revived by the class of 1976. This was the first project in a long list of such ventures, claimed Dr Zaki.

Answering a question, he said women from the lower strata of society usually compromised their own health for the sake of their children. They are admitted only when they are seriously in trouble.

“That’s why we felt the need to work in this area. If we work in this area, we will be serving all women.”

He said a lot of complications were faced by pregnant women simply because a lot of critical time was lost. “Our fully integrated department will help in drastically cutting the critical time lost due to superfluous activities,” he claimed.

Dr Zaki said the CHK had almost always had a labour room but the same had been reduced to a neglected set of rooms.

“The CHK’s three units, Gynae I, Gynae II and Gynae II, which were using the labour rooms simultaneously didn’t care if they were performing well or not. “They would come to the facility, do their thing, and go away to their own unit generally after complaining of lack of facilities. There was no sense of belonging.”

The turning of the labour rooms into a fully fledged department will help change all that.

In response to a question,

Dr Zaki said continuity of policies and practices was an important consideration. “If our policies, formulated after consultations, are not continued the new department will also fizzle out. “This is what the hospital’s MS and ministry people should realize.”

He said he and his team had been given the task of building and running the new department for three years.

“After three years we may continue if the concerned officials want us to.”