‘Both citizens, health sector were unprepared to deal with calamity’

Karachi
Neither the citizens’ nor the health facilities, both public and private, were prepared to withstand the blowback of the intense heat wave which had the city under its firm grip for over a week, health experts opined at a briefing held to spread awareness regarding heat strokes, on Thursday.
Renowned haematologist and founder of the Omair Sana Foundation Dr Saqib Ansari while addressing media personnel said that facilities such as the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Civil Hospital, Qatar Hospital besides other smaller government-run health facilities were set up around 30 years ago when the city’s population was recorded to be around 10 million; however, “Today when Karachi is stated to house more than 25 million people no additional health facilities besides these were set up and nor were the existing ones provided with proper equipment,” he said.
He added that instead of setting up small camps, the OSF preferred providing intravenous medicines besides other medical instruments and fans to various hospitals treating heat stroke patients.
Dr Ansari stated that treating heat stroke required no rocket science but the lack of preparedness of both the hospitals as well as the doctors to dispense treatment to such an overwhelming number of patients was what needed to be addressed.
Considering that temperature in all the provinces of Pakistan reached 45-48 degrees Celsius during summers and that there was a high credibility of such intense heat waves in future, it was time that the government, non-governmental sector as well as the media collectively worked for raising awareness with respect to heat strokes.
He advised people to not take it upon them to brave the hot and humid weather and stay indoors or take shelter instead of going out in the sun and advised them to drink plenty of water and try to cool down body temperature through ice.
On the other hand, he stressed the need for the government to build more hospitals and expand the existing ones as the current health structure was incapable of dealing with such disasters.
“It is during normal days that these public hospitals lack basic medicines and hospitals supplies, so we can imagine what went down when thousands of heat stroke patients were admitted at a single hospital n a single day.”
Another health specialist, Dr Zeeshan Ansari said developed countries ran special campaigns so as to make citizens’ aware of emergency measures due to be taken under such weather.
He further added that most of those who died during the heat wave were the elderly who must have been suffering from other health conditions and required special care during such extreme weathers.