Ojha campus: DUHS gets shiny new equipment, ICU and OT

The new surgical unit was deemed a necessary expense. Department of thoracic surgery inaugurated.

KARACHI: In an effort to provide economically affordable and standardised health services to the public, Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) inaugurated the department of thoracic surgery at the Ojha Institute of Chest Diseases on Tuesday.

The new department also has an intensive care unit with six beds, two ventilators, four cardiac monitors and two operation theatres. This will help provide medical and surgical treatment to patients suffering from tuberculosis.

Prof. Dr Iftekar Rathore, who was chief guest at the event, offered to share his professional experience in the operation theatre to improve the surgical unit. The university’s vice chancellor, Prof. Masood Hameed Khan, said that the unit was made with limited resources and the hospital would need financial aid as one surgery costs around Rs0.2 million. He added that a new bronchoscopy unit had also been set up at the hospital.

According to Ojha’s director Prof. Dr Iftikhar Ahmed, the surgical unit was a necessary expense as they were treating more than 0.2 million patients suffering from tuberculosis every year and around 10 per cent of these patients needed surgery. Currently, there are 144 registered patients recieving treatment for tuberculosis at the hospital. Some patients are also being monitored to check how responsive they are to the treatment.

About Ojha

At the Ojha campus, the university provides patients with free of cost treatment for chest diseases. According to Ahmed, when the university was set up in the early 1940s, the institute used to be a tuberculosis sanatorium.

“Today, our laboratory is the designated provincial reference laboratory for tuberculosis and we are trying to expand it,” he said. “It is a recognised centre for excellence for tuberculosis by the World Health Organisation and is spread over 130 acres of land.”

Syed Hashim Raza Zaidi, Dr Ismat Ara, Dr Solat Fatimi and the university’s faculty members also attended the event.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2012.