NICVD’s satellite centre to start functioning in Nawabshah tomorrow

The sixth satellite centre of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in the province will start functioning in Nawabshah on Friday, said NICVD Executive Director Prof Nadeem Qamar on Wednesday.

He said five satellite centres of the institute were already working in Larkana, Sehwan, Tando Muhammad Khan, Hyderabad and Sukkur, where the latest cardiovascular facilities were being provided to the citizens of those cities and the adjoining areas.

Prof Qamar added that the soft opening of the sixth satellite centre would be performed on Friday. “By establishing these satellite centres, we have provided the state-of-the-art cardiovascular treatment to the people of Sindh closer to their homes. In the past, patients from these areas had to come to Karachi and many used to die during their shifting.”

The NICVD has trained a team of qualified interventional cardiologists, who are moving between these satellite centres to perform various cardiovascular interventions, including primary PCI or angioplasty in emergency, angiography and other treatments, Prof Qamar added.

He said Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was expected to inaugurate the 6th satellite centre of the institute in Nawabshah whenever he found time from his busy schedule, but the centre would start functioning on Friday and would provide treatment to patients.

Prof Qamar said two more satellite centres, one each in Khairpur and Mithi, would also be established in the coming months, covering a large area of the interior of Sindh. These centres had emergency departments, a cath lab, a critical care unit and consultant clinics, where round-the-clock emergency treatment facilities, top-of-the-line consultation through qualified consultants, facilities of echocardiography, coronary artery angioplasty and angiography facilities were available like at any state-of-the-art health facility in the world, he added.

“Our vision and efforts are aimed at providing the best available treatment in the area of cardiovascular diseases to the people of Sindh closer to their homes so that time wasted in the shifting of patients could be reduced to save the maximum number of lives.”

In May last year, a team of top cardiologists and technicians from the NICVD, led by Prof Nadeem Rizvi, performed five cardiac procedures, including three primary PCIs, at the first satellite centre established at the Civil Hospital Larkana.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari inaugurated the Larkana centre in July last year, saying that the PPP government had taken revolutionary steps to provide health facilities to the people of Sindh. “I challenge all three chief ministers of the other provinces, including the Punjab CM, to establish similar facilities in their provinces,” he said.

He added that the people of Larkana had given sacrifices for the party and had struggled for the restoration of democracy. He said the party was indebted to the people of Larkana, recalling that party founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto laid the foundation of Chandka Medical College in1973 when medical facilities were available in a few big cities of the country.