In what could seem to be the government’s negligence, the only state-of-the-art Burn Centre in Pakistan, Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), is facing a daunting task to deal with a challenging situation as patients’ suffering from various kinds of burns has started flooding it.
According to the data collected from PIMS Burn Centre, the outpatient department (OPD) at the PIMS Burn Centre registered an over 100% increase in receiving the burn patients since the advent of the winter.
The data reveals that usually an average 40 to 50 burn patients visited the OPD daily; however an alarming increase has been witnessed during the on-going month, as an average over 140 to150 patients visited.
According to an official of the burn centre, who requested not to be named, the unscheduled and unannounced gas load-shedding is the main contributor in the rising number of burn patients.
He said that owing to the massive gas outages people preferred to use gas cylinders, which often exploded because the gas cylinders are made of substandard metals and people are unaware about their usage.
The official said that PIMS burn centre received 35 critical burnt patients by gas cylinder explosions from the twin cities Islamabad and Rawalpindi as well as from Peshawar during the last one week.
He said that out of these patients, few have kicked the bucket, while some of them referred to the regional burn units after initial treatment due to non-availability of place.
The official said with regret that the 20-bedded burn centre at PIMS cannot entertain the patients from across the country, but it can contribute a little in managing burn victims because of limited resources and extraordinary burden on it due to which around 15 to 16 patients with severe burn injuries were being denied admission in the hospital daily.
He further said that most of the burn patients are referred to the regional burn units after initial treatment because of non-availability of beds at the centre, resulting in the deaths of many, because of the absence of proper treatment facilities and trained staff in public hospitals elsewhere in the country.
He said that patients preferred to be admitted in PIMS burn centre, because it provides free-of-cost treatment to the patients, while they are being charged around Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 25,000 per day by Nescom burn centre in Islamabad and Kharian burn centre at the Combined Military Hospital Kharian.
The burn centre at PIMS was established to treat burn victims of federal capital, but the facility received burn patients from Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and up to Kashmir, he added.
He said that due to lack of state-of-the-art burn facilities elsewhere in the country, the burn victims have to bear the pain to travel to the federal capital from every nook and corner of the country to get free of cost treatment, hence the mortality rate is high, because timely and adequate treatment to burn patients reduced mortality.
The official said that KP and Punjab governments are making tall claims, but they failed to make functional the already completed burn centres each in LHR Peshawar and Jinnah hospital Lahore, overburdening the PIMS burn facility.
Despite repeated attempts, State Minister for Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Dr. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry MNA could not be reached for his comments in this regard.