Medical students, polio workers’ help to be sought to contain coronavirus spread

Lists of all final year students has been summoned from all medical colleges in Sindh, say sources

KARACHI: Amid shortage of para-medical staff and health care workers in Sindh, the provincial government has decided to seek assistance of final year medical students and polio workers to deal with coronavirus cases in Karachi, The Express Tribune has learnt.

So far 19 Pakistanis have been tested positive for COVID-19, the mysterious viral pneumonia-like disease caused by the novel coronavirus, with 15 of them belong to Sindh, three to Gilgit-Baltistan and one to Balochistan.

One patient has already fully recovered and was discharged from the hospital in Karachi last week. Most of the cases are linked to Iran which is a new major hotspot of the highly-contagious disease.

The decision was taken in a meeting headed by Director Health Karachi Dr Syed Hashim Shah and attended by district heads of all health centres in Karachi division.

It was revealed during the meeting that the provincial health department is facing shortage of paramedical staff as the majority of the cases mysterious disease have been reported from Sindh.

Sources told The Express Tribune that the officials have decided to deploy the final year medical students and polio workers at different hospitals and airports after giving them training to deal with the COVID-19 cases and identify suspected patients of the novel disease.



In a similar decision earlier this month, the federal government had decided to use polio surveillance teams to create awareness and identify suspected patients across the country.

In this regard, the list of final year medical students has been summoned from all private and public medical colleges. Presently, there are 16 nursing schools of private sector and 9 government schools are operating under the Sindh health department in the provincial capital. Whereas, 21 male and female nursing schools are in interior Sindh.

Meanwhile, in another notification the Sindh Health Department has barred its staff from visiting the secretariat without the prior permission of their relevant department head.

The mysterious COVID-19 virus, which originated in a vet market of the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has since then spread to more than 110 countries of the world, killing over 4,000 and infecting more than 115,000 people, mostly in China thus far.