KARACHI: Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) Vice Chancellor Dr Saeed Quraishy on Saturday said that an Indian liver transplant surgeon Dr Subhash Gupta is will in Karachi this month to carry out three to four liver transplant surgeries at the Ojha campus of DUHS.
He announced this while talking to media on the sidelines of a Scientific Conference on Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases organised by Pakistan Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases Society (PGLDS) here at a local hotel.
He said that despite border tensions between Pakistan and India and deadly skirmishes on the line of control in Kashmir and working boundary in Punjab, eminent Indian surgeon Gupta is reaching Karachi with his team to perform these liver transplants.
Eminent gastroenterologists and hepatologists from public and private sectors hospitals including PGLDS Patron Dr Shahid Ahmed, Dr Waseem Jaffri, Dr Lubna Kamani, Dr Amanullah Abbassi, Dr Sajjad Jamil, Dr Nazish Butt and others also spoke on various water-borne diseases, liver ailments, different types of viral hepatitis and other issues on the occasion.
Indian surgeon Gupta had performed the last liver transplant at Ojha campus of DUHS. He will this time train a team of Pakistani surgeons to carry out this complicated surgery locally without any foreign experts’ supervision.
“Trained human resource constraint is the basic hurdle that is preventing us from performing liver transplants locally and a large number of our patients are going to Shifa International Islamabad and abroad for liver transplants”, Dr Quraishy said adding that hopefully, Pakistani surgeons would be able to perform liver transplants after learning from Indian and other countries’ surgeons.
He maintained that provision of safe and clean drinking water is the most important intervention in preventing and controlling the outbreak of Extensively-Drug Resistant (EDR) typhoid in Sindh, which has now spread from Karachi to Sukkur after initially reported in Hyderabad.
He advised people to boil water at least for 20 minutes and then consume it for drinking purposes to avoid contracting infectious water-borne diseases.
Appreciating the organisers of the conference, he said Dow health varsity is providing hands-on training to young gastroenterologists and hepatologists and offered his varsity’s resources to the PGLDS in holding joint training sessions, conferences and workshops to train the young doctors.
PGLDS Patrol Dr Shahid Ahmed said that in these circumstances, we have established this society to create awareness among masses and to train young doctors so that people could be prevented and those suffering from the ailments and could be treated properly.
Demanding government to impose an immediate ban on over-the-counter sale of antibiotics without any prescription in Pakistan, he also urged the doctors to prescribe third generation antibiotics ‘very cautiously’ to avoid the emergence of more drug-resistant strains of deadly bacteria.
Dr Lubna Kamani deplored that hepatitis C is spreading at an alarming rate in Pakistan and despite being a preventable disease, it is causing thousands of deaths in the urban and rural areas of Pakistan.
“If hepatitis C is not controlled in Pakistan in the coming years, other countries may impose travel restrictions on Pakistan and only those people who do not have Hepatitis B and C virus in their blood, would be allowed to travel to the developed countries”, she warned.
Prof Dr Waseem Jaffri in his keynote address spoke on the various types of Hepatitis including A, B, C, D and E, discussed their mode of transmission and available treatment options in Pakistan but stressed that only option for the government and people is to prevent this viral hepatitis to save lives and monetary resources on their treatment.
