NICVD in talks with KMC to take over KIHD

The National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) has started negotiations with the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) to take over its Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases (KIHD) to transform it into one of the institute’s centres in the city.

The negotiations held between the NICVD and the KMC on Friday morning were led-by Dr Nadeem Rizvi and Dr Khalid from the NICVD, and the KMC was represented by its senior director health and medical services, Dr Birbal Genani, and the technical advisor to the mayor, SM Shakaib, officials said, adding that both sides agreed to form a committee to review different options regarding effective running of the KIHD.

The KIHD is a 170-bed specialised hospital for the treatment of cardiac ailments in the District Central of Karachi, which was established in the tenure of former Karachi mayor Naimatullah Khan, but it was made functional in the tenure of Mustafa Kamal in 2005. However, for the last several years, it has failed to meet the expectations of people due to a variety of reasons.

Officials in the KMC claimed that Mayor Wasim Akhtar was also willing to “hand it over” to the NICVD to run it as their satellite centre due to the inability of the KMC to run the tertiary-care hospital because of financial constraints as well as mismanagement on the part of health department officials.

On the other hand, the NICVD is trying to expand in Karachi where it is running six chest pain units (CPUs), but these CPUs are also sending patients with heart attacks to the NICVD which is already overburdened due to a large number of patients in a city of around 20 million people.

“Today we had a meeting with KMC officials and we discussed various options regarding the KIHD. We offered them to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) like other hospitals to turn it into one of the satellite centres of the NICVD in Karachi,” Prof Nadeem Rizvi, the second in command at the NICVD, told The News.

Denying reports of the NICVD “taking over” the KIHD, he said they offered several options to the KMC people, including transforming it into satellite centre or establishing a chest pain unit (CPU) on the pattern of Lyari General Hosptial at the KIHD, but he added that nothing would be done without the consent of KMC and KIHD representatives.

“We want to lower the pressure of patients on our emergency and wish to upgrade the KIHD to an extent where patients in need of emergency healthcare could also visit the KIHD without any reservation about the quality of treatment,” he said added that a committee comprising NICVD and KIHD people had been formed to further proceed on this issue in the coming days.

An official of the KMC, who requested anonymity, said two officials of the KMC, including Dr Birbal Genani and SM Shakaib, the technical adviser of the Karachi mayor, met NICVD officials on Friday and discussed various options, including handing over the KIHD completely or partially to the NICVD.

“NICVD officials presented three options to us, including complete takeover of the facility by them, taking over the emergency and cath labs of the KIHD by the NICVD administration or having double control of the KIHD by the administrations of both the hospitals,” the KMC official said.

KMC officials said they would present all the options to the mayor. They added that following the recommendations of the committee, a detailed proposal would be presented to the city council for approval before taking any decision regarding the KIHD.

“But it would be in the interest of the people of Karachi that the NICVD takes over the administrative control of the KIHD as they have the expertise and resources to run hospitals like this as they are already running several Satellite Centers and a complete hospital in Sukkur.”