Karachi: The Sindh government has begun construction of Pakistan’s largest cardiac hospital to be built in the Korangi area of Karachi.
Foreign Minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, laid the foundation stone of the cardiac care facility to be named after the PPP founder and former prime minister, the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The 1,200-bed facility will be built on 55 acres in the next five years at a cost of Rs 23 billion.
Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, told the audience at the groundbreaking ceremony that the new hospital would comprise a total of 16 large and small operation theatres and 18 cardiac catheterisation laboratories.
He said the hospital in addition to the provision of state-of-the-art cardiac treatment services would also do research on veterinary care.
Shah said the construction of the hospital reflected the vision of the Sindh government to expand public health and educational facilities to serve underprivileged families in the best possible manner.
He informed the audience that existing public hospitals, trauma centres, ambulance services, and treatment facilities for children and women were being expanded for serving the people of Sindh.
He mentioned that earlier the satellite facilities of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in Karachi had been built across the province with the aim that no heart patient should be deprived of compulsory cardiac care due to financial constraints.
He said treatment services provided by the NICVD were free of charge.
Shah told the audience that his government had been providing funding to the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) in Karachi that with 380 machines was the largest public sector dialysis facility in the country. He said the SIUT had been conducting 1350 dialysis sessions every day.
He disclosed that SIUT so far had performed 6844 kidney transplant procedures so once the transplantation was performed both the organ donor and recipient received lifelong follow-up healthcare services and medicines.
