Funding the KIHD

An already beleaguered healthcare system in Karachi received a further blow with the publication of a news report on Friday on the shortage of funds at the Karachi Institute of Heart Disease (KIHD). Due to the paucity at this health institute that is run by the city government, doctors have been unable to perform open heart surgeries for the last six months.  That is not all: the laboratory has been handed over to a private party to run and patients are forced to pay fees beyond their means for tests and a lot of equipment is out of order. Last year, KIHD performed four open heart surgeries a week but today it is virtually good for nothing. As there are only two cardiac institutes worth mentioning in Sindh (the other being the federally run National Institute of Cardiovascular Disease) able to deal with heart ailments, it is imperative for health officials to find funding for the KIHD which receives up to 500 visitors a day. A good portion of these visitors are forced to travel to Karachi because hospitals in their locales are poorly equipped and to be turned away at KIHD is tantamount to being awarded a death sentence. That nothing has been done to change the situation in the last six months speaks volumes of the priorities attached to healthcare.

A quick glance at the funds allocated for social development in this year’s budget for Sindh make for depressing reading. Granted that from the Rs442 billion Sindh budget, more funds have been allocated to health and education. However, the increase is not enough and certainly not cause of célèbre for a raise in funding doesn’t translate into improved services or rise in qualitative care. Funds need to be properly utilised and monitored — and handed over to KIHD at least so that it may treat the needy.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2010.