Falling short: Polyclinic lacks surgical facilities

ISLAMABAD:

The second largest public hospital of the capital, Polyclinic is without facility for surgeries of neurological, paediatric and cardiac patients and even lack diagnostic facilities of CT scan and MRI machines.

An official of the hospital told APP that Polyclinic hospital is in need of expansion to deal with 7,000-8,000 patients coming to its Outpatient Department every day.

However, the hospital cannot provide state of the art surgical and diagnostic facilities to patients because it lacks space to install CT scan and MRI machines, he added.

The hospital has an expansion plan and it will use 2.54 acres land of nearby Argentina Park. The plan is to build a five-storey hospital building with capacity of 1,100 beds.

Polyclinic was built in 1966 to deal with 500 patients per day in the Outpatient Department but nowadays thousands of patients visit the hospital for treatment.      The project has been facing hurdles as in 2015, the high court on the petition of a lawyer stayed the hospital’s expansion on the land of Argentina Park.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st,  2016.