KARACHI: Prior to PPP govt, the NICVD had witnessed years of neglect, and was in a deteriorating state. Due to limited funding, the hospital was consistently under-equipped - no ventilators were made available on the medical side or in emergency rooms. The hospital was severely under-staffed, with only one nurse catering to every 30 patients in the wards. The surgical mortality rate was at an alarming 23 percent.
There was no mechanism to facilitate first aid to serious emergency patients in congested pockets of the city. Hence, an increasing number of deaths - as we all know, time is muscle when it comes to a heart attack patient.
Patients often have to wait for over a year, before they could be fully diagnosed and treated. Furthermore, the federal government was only partially subsidizing the program, hence, patients would be liable for covering extremely high fees such as paying Rs100,000 for an angioplasty and and Rs10,000 for an angiography. In addition to this, poor patients travelling from remote areas would accrue travel expenses, accommodation expenses, medicine expenses, and as a result, debt. For a country where 1/5 people is at high risk for cardiovascular disease, the previous system robbed the common man's basic right to affordable and accessible care.
With the unconditional and relentless support of the GoS, from merely one deteriorating facility in Karachi, NICVD today takes pride in its 26 units across Sindh, that includes 10 hospitals and 16 Chest Pain Units. All this transformation has come about in a short span of 5 years. In fact, last year alone, over 2 million adult and pediatric cardiac patients have benefitted from the NICVD 24x7 services, accessible to the poorest of the poor, at their doorstep across the Sindh Province.-PR
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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