Health ministry deployed 600 doctors in quake-hit areas

22 Oct, 2005

Around 600 doctors, besides 64 nurses and 104 paramedics, have been deployed by the ministry of health and WHO in the earthquake-hit areas. They are rendering their services in field hospitals established by the ministry.
This was stated by the Federal Health Minister Mohammed Nasir Khan while chairing a meeting of the National Disaster Management Committee, here on Friday.
He said the field hospitals are being regularly supplied with necessary medical equipment and medicines and there is no shortage of any essential item in these hospitals.
It was decided that photographs of unaccompanied children and female patients admitted in different hospitals of Islamabad and Rawalpindi would be released to the electronic and print media for identification by their near and dear ones.
The meeting was apprised of the decision by the federal government not to transfer any patient to any other health facility outside Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
This has been done as a number of patients have been shifted to healthcare facilities temporarily established in the twin-cities which has helped to take in newly-evacuated patients.
Health Secretary Syed Anwar Mahmood who was also present in the meeting appealed for blood donations in view of the increasing influx of patients from hitherto inaccessible areas to the PIMS hospital in Islamabad.
The roads have now been opened and access of rescue teams improved to difficult areas thus we are receiving more patients in the federal hospitals in Islamabad, he said.
The voluntary blood donors may contact the Blood Bank at PIMS Hospital on these numbers: 051-9261170-90 and 051-9261255.
It was informed that 24 teams for fumigation of the affected areas, to ward off the threat of spread of diseases, have been dispatched to the Azad Jammu & Kashmir while 18 teams are already working in Mansehra.
There is no dearth of plastic surgeons in the PIMS Hospital and many surgeons who have arrived from abroad are attending to the severely injured patients in the hospital, the meeting was told.
In view of the threat of tetanus infection among injured patients, the vaccine has been made available in all hospitals where injured persons from the quake-hit areas are being treated, the health secretary informed the meeting.
It has been made mandatory for all patients admitted to the health facilities and field hospitals to receive immunisation against tetanus.
Different hospitals in Rawalpindi and Islamabad had received around 12,000 injured patients from quake-hit areas. At present 3,798 are admitted in different hospitals of the twin-cities. The PIMS Hospital received 200 patients on Friday, including 69 children.

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