Matters of the heart: Three new institutes on the cards, says KMC

The announcement comes while KIHD employees protest over not receiving salaries on time.

KARACHI:
The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) would construct three heart disease institutes in the 2012-13 fiscal year, announced Karachi Metropolitan Corporation administrator Mohammad Hussain Syed on Monday.

The institutes would be located in Malir, Shah Faisal Colony and Korangi and would cater to the needs of a growing number of patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases, said Syed. He was speaking at the 5th Annual Abdul Haq Khan Cardiology Symposium of the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases (KIHD).

“Diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and [higher] cholesterol has put people between ages 30 to 40 years increasingly at risk of suffering from heart ailments,” said Syed.

The KMC administrator admitted that there was a need for having multiple heart hospitals across all five municipal corporations in the city. The three proposed institutes would work in tandem with the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases (KIHD).


Syed acknowledged the lives KIHD had saved since it came into existence in 2005. “Nearly 10,000 patients have had their angioplasty and 11,000 received angiography at the institute.”

The city administration, which will announce its budget within two weeks, is known for announcing ambitious projects and then failing to complete them.

KMC’s heath department has sent a proposal seeking Rs220 million for multiple projects for the next fiscal year. However, it remained unclear if the three new proposed heart institutes were included in that list.

The KIHD had faced a financial crunch in recent months and its employees have protested for not receiving their salaries on time.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7th, 2012.
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