Civil Hospital - Services

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.