KARACHI: Despite spending billions of rupees over the last 10 years on having liver transplant facilities in Sindh by inviting Indian, Turkish, Iranian and German as well as Pakistani doctors from other provinces, the provincial government is still sending local patients to a private hospital in Islamabad for the complicated surgery at government expenses.
Most recently, former chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah approved Rs5 million for a liver transplant surgery on a young patient from Shikarpur, Fahad Ali Mangi, at Shifa International Hospital Islamabad despite the fact that at least three public health facilities in the province are experimenting with liver transplant surgeries with the help of Indian, Turkish, Iranian, German and Pakistani surgeons and teams, The News has learnt.
The Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), Dow University of Health Sciences and Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) have received at least 15 to 20 billion rupees from the provincial exchequer to launch their indigenous liver transplant programs, but they have been unable to perform the complicated surgery without the support of foreign surgeons and their teams’ support.
DUHS program:The Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) launched a liver transplant program in the tenure of its former vice chancellor, Prof Masood Hameed, who had initially invited a Turkish surgeon to train and perform liver transplant surgeries at the DUHS Ojha Complex in 2015 but later switched to Indians for performing liver transplants and train the team of DUHS surgeons.
This approach badly backfired as Indian surgeon Prof Subhas Gupta faced difficulties in arriving in Karachi due to visa complications and the Dow University program derailed.
“Our liver transplant program failed or did not kick off because we did not have the technical people and the strategy was flawed. Now we have changed the strategy and have sent two of our surgeons to Shifa International Islamabad for training,” Vice Chancellor Dow University of Health Sciences Prof Saeed Quraishy told The News.
He said they decided to send their surgeons to Shifa after problems with the arrival of Dr Subhash Gupta from India, who on a number of occasions could not reach Karachi to perform surgeries, but he added that the DUHS was still in contact with him and he would be invited again to perform more liver transplant surgeries at the DUHS.
“Now the Dr Gupta has the Pakistani visa and hopefully he would be visiting Pakistan next month [in July] to perform liver transplant surgeries at the Ojha Campus,” Prof Quraishy said.
On the other hand, the head of DUHS Liver Transplant, Prof Shams Nadeem Alam, is also under criticism on charges of plagiarism and his case is pending with the DUHS Syndicate, further complicating the liver transplant issue at the prestigious health university of Pakistan. A team of Iranian liver transplant surgeons and experts led by Dr Malek Al Husaini from the Ibne Sina Transplant Centre Shiraz, Iran, is currently in Karachi and preparing to perform liver transplant surgeries, but the SIUT program is still in the experimental stages as local surgeons and experts are not able yet to perform the complicated surgery without Iranians’ assistance. Officials in the Sindh health department claimed that the SIUT, which was known for kidney transplants all over the world, received the highest amount of funding from the provincial government and last year it received Rs5 billion as grant but it had yet to make any progress in the field of liver transplant surgeries.
GIMS program: The Pakistan Peoples Party-led Sindh government claims the creation of Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) as one of its achievements but despite acquiring Rs18 billion so far from the provincial government, the institute has not only failed to achieve the target of performing liver transplant surgeries without any foreign help but is also proving to be a waste of precious monetary resources, health department officials said.
Interestingly, GIMS had the services of top liver transplant surgeons from various countries of the world, including Germany, Turkey, United Kingdom, India and even from Lahore, Punjab, but still its experts have failed to perform surgeries without foreign assistance, while on many occasions, both recipients and donors died after the surgery.
GIMS Director Dr Rahim Bux Bhatti, who was recently awarded with the Pride of Performance Award by the government of Pakistan, blamed the Sindh government for not approving their summary for the provision of Rs1,400 million for two years to perform liver transplants, saying the bureaucratic hurdles resulted in their failure to start proving liver transplant facilities to the people of Sindh and the rest of the country. “We have the services of Dr Waheed Dogar from Lahore, Dr Niaz from UK, Dr Subhash Gupta from India and Dr Arzo from Turkey are performing liver transplant surgeries, while in the past German experts helped us in training in this regard.” Prof Bhatti added that now they were able to perform two to four liver transplants in a month from July this year. “The federal government has agreed to provide us Rs3.4 million per liver transplant surgery at GIMS and from July onwards, we would be performing two to four surgeries per month at our institute,” he claimed but refused to answer as to when they would be able to perform liver transplants without foreign experts’ support and assistance.
