Karachi: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari unveiled a plaque marking the start of construction on Pakistan’s largest cardiac hospital in Karachi on Monday.
The heart care facility will be named after late PPP founder and former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari lay the groundwork for it.
Over the next five years, the 1,200-bed hospital would be built on 55 acres for Rs 23 billion.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah told the gathering at the groundbreaking ceremony that the new hospital would contain 16 major and minor operating rooms, as well as 18 cardiac catheterization labs.
He stated that the hospital would do veterinary care research in addition to providing cutting-edge cardiac treatment procedures.
The hospital’s construction, according to Shah, symbolises the Sindh government’s desire to improve access to public health and educational facilities for low-income households.
He told the crowd that present public hospitals, trauma centres, ambulance services, and medical facilities for children and women would be expanded in order to better serve the people of Sindh.
He stated that the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in Karachi has already established satellite clinics around the province so that no heart patient would be denied required cardiac care due to financial constraints.
He claimed that the NICVD provided free therapy.
He reminded the audience that the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), which has 380 machines and is the largest public sector dialysis centre in the country, has got funding from Shah’s government. According to him, the SIUT completed 1350 dialysis sessions per day.
SIUT, he claims, has performed 6844 kidney transplant surgeries to far. Both the organ donor and the recipient required continued medical care and prescription drugs following the procedure.