QUETTA: Muhammad Ishaq scrambled to arrange an expensive private ambulance to Karachi after his younger brother had intense chest pain earlier this week in a remote village in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan.
But before he could embark on the long journey from a village in Killa Abdullah district to the port city of Karachi in a neighboring province, Ishaq found out that his brother could receive equally good treatment at a new public hospital much closer to home in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan.
Constructed on an area of over 120,000 square meters, the 120-bed Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute of Cardiology in Quetta was fully inaugurated just last month. Built by the United Arab Emirates at a cost of $27.3 million provided by the Abu Dhabi Development Fund, the facility is now open even for complicated surgeries.
“I hired a rented ambulance to take my younger brother Asmatullah to Karachi after he suffered severe chest pains,” Ishaq told Arab News. “However, a relative informed us there was a new cardiac facility in Quetta and we decided to bring him here in the early hours of Wednesday.”
Muhammad Ishaq, a 44-year-old resident of a remote village in Killa Abdullah, stands with his ailing brother at Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute of Cardiology in Quetta, Pakistan, on December 21, 2022. (AN Photo)
The hospital opened its outpatient department in May before starting angioplasties and more complex heart surgeries six months later. In the 26 days since the facility’s full inauguration, 12 bypass and valve replacement operations have been performed there.
Asif Khan, a 60-year-old resident of Quetta’s Nawa Killi neighborhood who had open-heart surgery at the hospital on December 20, said he previously had to travel to Sukkur in neighboring Sindh province for treatment twice after he was first diagnosed with heart disease in April.
“Then I visited the Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan Institute of Cardiology for my medical checkup in the first week of December,” he said, “and the doctors gave me assurances that my open-heart surgery could also be performed here.”
This picture taken on December 21, 2022, shows the 120-bed Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute of Cardiology in Quetta, Pakistan, which is the first hospital for heart patients in Balochistan province. (AN Photo)
Dr. Khuzaima Tariq, who has been working at the facility for the last six months, said it was the only hospital in Balochistan where a full range of cardiac treatments were available.
“This health facility is available for people belonging to all four provinces of the country,” she said.
“All cardiac facilities are available here. Starting from Cath Lab, placement of pacemaker, open heart surgery, everything is available here. We have a modular theater where we have started open heart surgeries.”
Tariq declined to comment on whether surgeries at the facility were subsidized or how much patients were charged.
Dr. Muhammad Hashim, her colleague, said a large number of patients were regularly coming to the hospital now and many people from neighboring Afghanistan were also visiting for consultations and treatment.
“Until recently, the residents of Balochistan were deprived of quality heart treatment,” he said. “Now, the patients who used to travel to places like Karachi and Sukkur have started getting proper treatment by professional health care experts.”
Another heart patient Zahoor Ahmed said he was relieved there was finally a state of the art facility close to home.
“Doctors referred me to travel to Sukkur but from here, transport and etcetera to Sukkur was very expensive, it was very far,” [for treatment],” Ahmed said from his hospital bed at the facility. “Now here, it is near, and in one place we are getting all the facilities.”
