Work on 550-bed Indus Hospital to begin in 2018

PESHAWAR: The work on the construction of the 550-bed Indus Hospital in the city would begin in 2018 on the land provided free of cost by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government.

This was announced at the board of management get-together of the Indus Hospital in Peshawar. The well-attended event brought together traders, doctors, members of the civil society and philanthropists. The function was organized by the members of the regional management board of Indus Hospital for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Mian Mohammad Ahsan, the founder chairman of the Indus Hospital Health Network Regional Board, its chief executive officer Dr Abdul Bari Khan, philanthropist Nasim Riaz and others spoke on the occasion.

Noor Hazrat, a local trader, led the prayers for seeking the blessings of Allah and achieving success in completing the hospital project in Peshawar. He remarked that the Pakhtuns deserved to have a quality hospital in Peshawar. “Punjab already has seven Indus hospitals, but we don’t have any in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is time we have one Indus Hospital offering free treatment in Peshawar as well. I appeal to local philanthropists and others to contribute generously towards establishing Indus Hospital in Peshawar,” he argued.

The planned Indus Hospital in Peshawar would have 100 beds in the first phase, 250 in the second phase and 550 on completion of the third and final phase.

It was revealed that the PTI chairman Imran Khan and KP chief minister Pervez Khattak had allocated 101 kanals of land at a prime location in Peshawar free of cost for the Indus Hospital. The site survey for the hospital had already been done and work on the state-of-the-art hospital would begin in 2018.

It would be a teaching hospital with a dedicated paediatric cardiology department and physical rehabilitation centre. A medical college and a dental college would be part of the complex. The total cost of the project would be Rs8.8 billion.

Presentations were given at the get-together about the launching of the first Indus Hospital in Peshawar in 2007 and its fast-paced journey since then as more such hospitals were established in other parts of the country, particularly in Punjab.

Dr Abdul Bari recalled that he and his colleagues had no money when they started planning to establish the Indus Hospital in Karachi with the aim to provide free and quality treatment. “Our benchmark was the Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi. We wanted to provide even better treatment than available at the Aga Khan Hospital,” he remarked.

He thanked the ICRC delegation head in Pakistan, Reto Stocker, for assisting the Indus Hospital in establishing three physical rehabilitation centres in its various hospitals in Sindh and Punjab.