Sindh to get 8 ambulances with ventilators

KARACHI: While Punjab has had the privilege of a rescue service with state-of-the art ambulances since 2004, there had been no such service by the government in the largest city of the country, Karachi, till now.

Critically ill patients in Sindh will now be able to get immediate medical attention since the government is getting state-of-the-art ambulances equipped with ventilators.

The Sindh Ministry of Health is in the process of buying especially equipped ambulances that will have intensive and immediate medical care services that will be distributed among the teaching hospitals of Sindh, The Express Tribune has learnt.

In view of the burgeoning population of Karachi and with the rise in terrorism and emergencies in the entire country, ambulance services have become a need greater than before. As a result, more attention is also being focused on making the emergency service in the city bigger and better.

Dr Khalid Leghari, the former additional secretary of health, who was in charge of the project before the present Dr Suresh Kumar, said that the Sindh health department approved the proposal for eight ambulances in the Annual Development Programme.

However, it is going to take around three to four months before they are actually obtained and then passed on to the hospitals.

He said that the total cost of these ambulances will be around Rs36 million. The ambulances will be given to the medical superintendents of the eight teaching hospitals in the province.

They are: Lyari General Hospital, Civil Hospital in Karachi as well as Liaquat Medical Hospital in Hyderabad, People’s Medical Hospital in Nawabshah, Chandka Medical College Hospital, Larkana Medical College Hospital, Ghulam Mohammad Medical College Hospital Sukkur and Civil Hospital Mirpurkhas. They will receive an ambulance each.

Dr Leghari said that these ambulances will a trained technical expert who will be part of the ambulance staff so as to handle the equipment for the patient.

Dr Saeed Qureshi, the medical superintendent of Civil Hospital Karachi, said that such ambulances are going be useful for transferring patients in critical condition from one district to another or from one hospital to another within the city. “It will be of immense help for incubated patients with endo-tracheal tubes” he explained.

A ventilator is a computerised machine that is used to pump breathable air in and out of the lungs of a patient who cannot breathe himself or is having trouble breathing.

Ventilators are usually used in intensive care and emergency medicine and are expensive machines.

Currently, patients requiring ventilators are being transferred with the help of an Ambu-bag. An Ambu bag is a manually operated device.

Sahabbir Mughal, a Chippa ambulance driver, said that while their normal ambulances have an oxygen pump, there are just 10 to 15 ambulances that have Ambu bags.

They are often parked outside Civil, Abbasi Shaheed and Jinnah hospital for serious patients.

According to the driver, the Chippa’s rescue team has 107 ambulances, which is just not enough for a city as vast and chaotic as Karachi.

Meanwhile, the only well-equipped ambulance service in Karachi is the 2626 Aman service, which began in March 2009. The service has 70 ambulances and each vehicle is equipped with oxygen, a defibrillator, suction machine, splints, a spine board, collapsible stretcher and nebulisers in addition to life-saving medication, a doctor, an emergency technician, a male staffer and a driver, said Abid Naveed, who is the manager command and control of EMS Aman Foundation.

However this comes at a price. The Aman ambulance service charges Rs200 for government hospital patients and Rs1,600 for private hospitals.

“A government-funded service for people who cannot afford the high fees for rescue ambulances is going to be a great relief,” said Shafiqur Rahim, a patient’s brother outside Civil Hospital, Karachi.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2^nd, 2010.