Eid emergency: Hospitals flooded with trauma, gastro patients

Holiday season saw an increase in people performing dangerous stunts and overeating

ISLAMABAD: With Ramazan over, people chose to celebrate in different ways. Some of these methods, though, landed them in the hospital, including dangerous stunt driving and overeating.

Doctors said that the emergency departments of major hospitals in the twin cities were filled with trauma, gastroenteritis and diarrhoea patients during three days of Eid holidays.

Over 4,000 patients reportedly headed to the largest tertiary care facility in the area, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) during the Eid holidays. Of these, 1,000 patients suffered from diarrhoea, gastroenteritis or fever.



This follows from the 7,000 patients the hospital had treated during the holy month of Ramazan for stomach related issues.

Some old patients also came to the emergency ward for follow-up checkups.

However, a significant number or around 700 people were taken to the hospital after suffering from traffic accidents. Of these, 450 were motorbike riders.

Doctors at Pims said that they had received dozens of patients of trauma including those suffering from head injuries and fractures. At least eight people had to undergo surgery for their injuries and were admitted in the hospital while others were discharged.

Many of them who sustained severe head injuries and fractures were young motorbike riders who fell while attempting stunts on busy roads, a hospital spokesperson said.

Similarly, officials at the Federal Government Services Hospital (Polyclinic) said that by Monday afternoon, the hospital had received around 3,318 patients and more are expected to come as people were still in a mood to celebrate and going to picnic spots, parks, restaurants, and shrines.



Of those brought to the hospital, around 170 were traffic accident cases, 42 were medico-legal cases and 3,106 were emergency cases.

Regarding the accident cases, doctors at Polyclinic repeated the story at Pims: that most of them were young motorbike riders who had sustained injuries while one-wheeling or other stunts on the roads.

The 42 medico-legal accidents, doctors explained, were those where two vehicles had crashed.  However, none of the cases was too serious and the patients were discharged after a few hours of treatment.

Polyclinic spokesperson Dr Sharif Astori said the hospital emergency ward was packed with patients complaining of various ailments such as high blood pressure, sugar levels, chest and abdominal pain.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19^th, 2018.