13th chest pain unit of NICVD inaugurated in Gizri

Adviser to the Sindh Chief Minister on Environment Murtaza Wahab on Thursday inaugurated the 13th chest pain unit (CPU) of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) beneath the Gizri Flyover in Karachi.

He said Karachi was going to have another complete hospital for cardiovascular diseases shortly as Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar had finally agreed to hand over the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases (KIHD) to the Sindh government for making it a satellite centre of the NICVD.

“I have a good news for the people of Karachi that today at the Board of Governors meeting of the NICVD, Mayor Karachi Wasim Akhtar has finally agreed to hand over the KIHD to the Sindh government for its conversion into one of the satellite centres of the NICVD. This step would help us in the provision of quality cardiac health facilities to the people of Districts Central, Malir and East and nearby areas,” Wahab said while speaking as chief guest at the inauguration ceremony of the 13th CPU of the NICVD in Karachi.

The ceremony was also addressed by Executive Director NICVD Prof Nadeem Qamar while Incharge NICVD emergency services Prof Munawar Khursheed as well as local leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party and a large number of PPP workers were also present on the occasion.

Wahab maintained that Karachi was going to have two satellite centres of the NICV D or complete cardiac hospitals in the coming months as the chest pain unit in Lyari had already been upgraded and from Monday next services of angiography and Primary PCI would be started in Lyari.

“A soft opening of Lyari’s satellite centre would be performed on Monday with the start of angiography and Primary PCI services while its inauguration would be carried out by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in the coming days,” he said and claimed that these CPUs and satellite centres were gifts to the people of Karachi and other cities of Sindh from the government of the PPP.

“Those who are critics of the 18th Constitutional Amendment should come to the Sindh province and see how the PPP government revolutionised the health sector in the province and from one cardiac hospital in Karachi in 2011 converted it into a complete network of cardiac-care facilities, spread to entire Sindh where now open heart surgeries are being performed in small towns like Tando Muhammad Khan and people from entire Pakistan are coming to seek quality healthcare there.”

Responding to queries of reporters, the adviser said that on his request, the local government minister had assured him that the KMC-run maternity hospital in the Gizri area, which was in an extremely poor condition, would be revamped to facilitate people. He added the government had also started repairs of roads in the city.

He maintained that the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency had started conducting raids not only in Karachi but also in Hyderabad to curb the use of plastic bags as a ban on polythene bags in the province had come into effect.

He and urged the media to point out violations so that action could be taken against violators. Responding to another query, he urged Prime Minister Imran Khan to take a U-turn on the prices of medicine and cancel the increase in the prices of medicines so that people could afford them. He accused the federal government of failing to import essential medicines, including Anti-Rabies Vaccine (ARV), whose shortage was resulting in a serious health crisis and deaths.

Prof Nadeem Qamar said that due to success of the chest pain unit (CPU) program of the NICVD, they were under tremendous pressure from the people from different areas of Karachi and other cities and towns of Sindh to set up these CPUs in their areas so that lives could be saved in case of heart attacks.

“So this is the 13th CPU in Karachi and Sindh while in the current month, we are going to establish two more CPUs in Karachi. In the coming few months, we are going to establish five more chest pain units across the city to facilitate the masses,” he said, adding that entire Karachi would be linked to the NICVD through CPUs and satellite centres so that precious human lives could be saved.

Terming these CPUs a gift from the Sindh government to the people of Karachi, which saved more than 6,816 lives and attended around three hundred thousand people during the last one and half years, Prof Qamar said the establishment of these facilities was not possible without the financial and material support of the Sindh government.

He added that soon Karachi would have two more satellite centres which would be complete cardiac hospitals in all respects.