Funds sought to make RIUT functional

Last Covid-19 patient discharged from dedicated facility meant to treat patients with acute kidney ailments

RAWALPINDI:

The administrator has sought the requisite funds to make the Rawalpindi Institute of Urology and Kidney Transplant (RIUT) finally operational after the last patient of coronavirus was discharged from the dedicated health facility meant to provide quality treatment to patients suffering from acute kidney diseases.

The RIUT, which could not be made functional since the foundation of the institute was laid in 2012 by former Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, was converted into a dedicated medical facility two years back for treating Covid-19 patients after the outbreak of the infectious disease.

Sources said that currently left with no Covid-infected patients, the RIUT administration is now focused on going full-steam ahead with its plans to make the institute functional by opening the hospital's emergency, outpatients department and dialysis centres initially.

The requisite equipment for the treatment and transplant facility has already been purchased.

The RIUT administrator has also demanded to hand over the basement, ground floor and first floor of the building of the first institute of urology and kidney transplant in the Rawalpindi division.

Ninety per cent of work on the building has been completed so far. Despite this, the building could not be transferred from the PWD to the Punjab health department. Valuable machines and equipment have been brought to the building and dumped.

Earlier, the government had appointed Dr Zainul Ama as the project director to make the health facility functional. However, after seven months of his appointment, the hospital could not be made functional to treat kidney patients.

The present government had announced a grant of Rs800 million to make the RIUT functional.

Similarly, the project concept (PC-1) of Rs7 billion was also approved for recruitment of human resources, paying their salaries and meeting other expenses but the project director could not get full support.

Currently, kidney transplants are being carried out at the Benazir Bhutto General Hospital with three operations conducted and five being in the pipeline. Kidney transplants at the Benazir Bhutto General Hospital are carried out at a much slower pace due to limited capacity in the urology department. Critical patients have to wait for up to six months for their turn at the BBH owing to the heavy workload at the urology department while private setups charge up to Rs4 million for a single transplant and multiple dialyses.

Dialysis facilities in government hospitals are limited, making it difficult for patients to get the most expensive dialysis from the private sector.

Health officials said that it has become imperative to make the RIUT functional without delay keeping in view the increasing number of kidney patients.

The cost of the RIUT, which has been under construction for nine years, has been revised twice and since then the estimated cost has increased from Rs3 billion to more than Rs4 billion.

Once functional, the 265-bed hospital will now be the only facility for the treatment of patients in the Rawalpindi division, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The hospital will have a 30-machine dialysis centre, with five state-of-the-art modular operating theatres and one operating theatre. Kidney transplant operations will be performed at the RIUT.

The hospital project was originally scheduled to be completed in 2016 but it could not be made functional yet.

Officials said that they have set an initial target to recruit 1,100 staff members including doctors, nurses, and others for the hospital.

Managing human resources at the institute had been a massive problem to date, with 210 nurses having been transferred to Lahore and other hospitals in Rawalpindi and Murree as RIUT was unable to pay their salaries.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2022.