President for simplifying treatment procedure

ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain on Saturday stressed upon simplifying the treatment procedure of chronic diseases so that marginalised and low-income strata of the society could also benefit from it.

Addressing at 15th International Cardiac Electrophysiology Conference at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology and National Institute of Heart Diseases (AFIC & NIHD), the president expressed his satisfaction that education and research for the provision of medical facilities was among the priorities of doctors as they were continuously engaged in these matters. In this regard, he said, other than the government, the medical institutions and professional organisations could focus on these issues.

“Successful experiments in this respect had also been conducted in various parts of the world, including Pakistan,” he said and added diagnosis, treatment and surgery of heart diseases were so much lengthy, complicated and expensive that apart from poor and unemployed even the middle class could not afford these procedures.

“One of the reasons behind this was the lack of medical research. The other reason was that the machinery and equipment for the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions was imported from abroad which increased the cost of these procedures,” he underlined.

“It is imperative for the protection of human life that the standard of medicine and machinery being used for the diagnosis and treatment should be state of the art,” he added.

Pakistan Army Adjutant General, Lieutenant General Anwar Ali Hyder, Lt Gen Zahid Hmaid surgeon general, Director General Medical Services and eminent cardiologist from Pakistan and abroad were present on the occasion.

The president noted that the prevalence of heart diseases could be gauged from the figures that every year around one million people lost their lives due to these issues in Pakistan.

President of Royal College of Physician, Edinburgh, UK, Professor Derrek Bell, along with his team and delegates from United State of America, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and more than 360 doctors from across the country, attended the conference.