Services
Initially established in 1898 with 250 beds to provide basic health facilities, the hospital has expanded considerably and has been totally transformed over the years. Its 1900 beds are located in 34 department, with over a dozen major operation theaters and a huge out patient attendance. Greater stress is being laid on public-private partnerships and preventive work notably in the Paediatrics department to avert unnecessary infant and child deaths due to pneumonia, malnutrition, diarrhea or vaccine-preventable illnesses. Measures are also in place to prevent and control major communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis, Malaria, viral Hepatitis B & C and HIV/AIDS, in addition to non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancers having a huge burden in Pakistan. Today as Karachi is a sprawling mega-city with a population estimated at 14 million divided into 18 major towns, the Civil Hospital Karachi lives on to tell two tales in the same city. The services of this tertiary care institution has kept in line with the latest technological advances as far as that is compatible with the situation in a low-income developing country. Sophisticated laboratory and radiographical procedures, investigations and examinations are performed totally free to benefit the poor patients attending the hospital. An average of two million out-patients report to the hospital annually; 95% of which are non-affording patients entailing a huge cost on medicines, laboratory facilities and other logistics.
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Famous quotes containing the word services:
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The community and family networks which helped sustain earlier generations have become scarcer for growing numbers of young parents. Those who lack links to these traditional sources of support are hard-pressed to find other resources, given the emphasis in our society on providing treatment services, rather than preventive services and support for health maintenance and well-being.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)