KARACHI:Chief Executive Officer of Indus Hospital Network (IHN), Prof Dr Abdul Bari Khan said that neither the private nor the government hospitals are providing quality healthcare services to people in Pakistan.
“Private hospitals are charging a lot but except for a few, most of the private hospitals are not meeting the healthcare needs of people while everybody knows about the service government hospitals. In these circumstances, we have planned to establish 500 primary healthcare clinics in the country with a focus on primary healthcare and diabetes” these views expressed by Prof Dr Abdul Bari during inaugural ceremony of Ehad Medical Centre at Bahadurabad, Karachi.
Renowned physicians and health experts including Prof Dr Abdul Basit, Prof Dr Zaman Shaikh, Dr Mehfooz Alam, and others were also present and spoke at the inauguration of the second branch of Ehad Medical Center.
Dr Abdul Bari deplored that governments were not doing enough to meet the healthcare needs of the people of Pakistan where the ‘filthy rich’ travel abroad to seek medical treatment while some who could afford to avail expensive health services at private medical institutions visit private hospitals. On the flip side, a vast majority of Pakistanis are not being properly treated in public and most of the private health facilities in the country.
“Unfortunately, middle, lower-middle and poor segments of Pakistani society have no place to avail proper medical treatment despite spending a major portion of their monthly incomes. Except for a few, most of the private hospitals are busy looting patients while public hospitals are overburdened and cannot provide proper healthcare services to the people”.
He hoped that with the establishment of primary healthcare clinics and medical centers like Ehad, people would be able to avail quality medical consultation, effective and genuine medicines, and authentic diagnostic services.
He further deplored that 90 percent of the blood banks were providing “unscreened and tainted blood” to the people in Pakistan and added that blood transfusion services had become a source of spread of lethal diseases to people instead of curing them. “Instead of getting cured and healed, our children and people are contracting a lethal infectious disease through tainted blood but nobody is looking into this serious issue”, he observed.
Pledging to assist the Ehad Medical Center network in the provision of quality medical services to people, Prof Dr Abdul Bari said Indus Hospital Network had the highest number of clinical pharmacists compared to any other health facility in Pakistan and vowed to follow the structure of Ehad at their planned primary healthcare clinics in the country.
Eminent Diabetologist and Consultant and Advisor of the Ehad Medical Center Prof Dr Abdul Basit said he was planning to establish such clinics for the last 15-20 years where all the consultation and treatment facilities are available to patients under one roof. He further added that as per their plan to standardize diabetes care in Pakistan, they were planning to establish 3,000 such clinics throughout the country.
“At Ehad, we are providing quality consultation services, diagnostics, telemedicine, education on diet and lifestyle, obesity management as well as world-class pharmacy services”. Prof. Abdul Basit added that global practices and advancements in the field of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and other lifestyle diseases would at Ehad Medical Center.
Renowned diabetologist Prof. Zaman Shaikh said it was heartening to learn that health fraternity had stopped looking towards the government for the provision of healthcare facilities to people and now they had joined hands to resolve the healthcare issues of masses on self-help basis.
“Despite our repeated suggestions and recommendations for the establishment of primary healthcare facilities and diabetes clinics at district levels, authorities are unmoved for several decades but now doctors and physicians have joined hands, which is a good omen for the people of Pakistan”.
He further added that diabetes is an expensive disease and never abandons a person until his or her last breath.
GM operations of the Ehad Medical Center Syed Yasir Hashmi shed light on the Ehad Medical Center’s purpose of existence which is to improve primary health care facilities in Pakistan with a standardized medication management system, specialized clinics, state-of-the-art community pharmacies, reputable labs, telemedicine, etc.
He also emphasized the importance of authentic supply chain of medicines and elaborated on the success of Ehad Healthcare.
Dr Hooria Chaudhry spoke about availability of telemedicine facility at the Ehad Medical Center through which, patients could consult doctors in entire Pakistan and developed countries of the world including US, Europe, Turkey and Middle East.