Islamabad: The coronavirus illness, COVID-19 outbreak may possibly be going to prove itself the largest and the most severe outbreak ever seen by the population in Pakistan though the country has a poor state of medical specialties including Critical Care Medicine (CCM), Emergency Medicine (EM) and Infectious Diseases (ID) departments and no-one from the concerned government authorities seems to be giving attention to the matter.
Pakistan has a total of eight institutes, two operating under Armed Forces, and three each in private and public sector which are running training programmes FCPS (Fellow of College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan) Infectious Diseases under College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan. The condition os pathetic as we have only eight supervisors and 21 trainees all across Pakistan in ID departments accredited with the CPSP.
Of the eight institutes, four each are operating in Punjab and Sindh while in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK, not a single institute has infectious diseases department offering training.
Almost same is the situation of the specialty of Emergency Medicines as the FPSC training programme in EM is being run by only nine institutes all across Pakistan two of which are operating under armed forces, four in private sector and three in public sector with a total of 23 supervisors and 137 post graduate trainees. As many as 17 of the supervisors and 83 trainees are in private sector while in Punjab province, only one institute in public sector namely King Edward Medical University and affiliated hospital in Lahore is running the FCPS Emergency Medicine program with one supervisor and 10 trainees.
The situation of specialty of Critical Care Medicine in Pakistan is also much poor as a total of 14 institutes having 13 supervisors are providing FCPS training to only 39 trainees. Three of the institutes are operating under armed forces, five in private sector and only six in public sector all across Pakistan.
In public sector, we have only six institutes with five supervisors and 17 trainees in CCM in Pakistan while in Punjab province, the FCPS in CCM is available at only one hospital in public sector, at Services Institute of Medical Sciences in Lahore, said Regional Director at CPSP Rawalpindi-Islamabad Region Professor Dr. Muhammad Shoaib Shafi while talking to ‘The News’.
He added that not a single public sector hospital in Punjab has a standard Infectious Diseases department that can run FCPS programme of ID and it hints towards a much disappointing situation.
He said in the past, he had offered to Punjab health ministers that the CPSP can provide specialists on rotation to DHQ hospitals to develop standard departments in the specialties of EM, CCM and ID but the governments have never paid any attention to the subject.
These specialties are much needed and all tertiary care hospitals in the country should develop standard departments and start training in these specialties, he said. He added that in the past, he met with the then chief minister Shahbaz Shareef, in 2016, but he did not show any interest in developing these departments and operating training programmes which may be much needed in near future.
