KARACHI: Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) President Dr Mirza Ali Azhar has revealed that less than 100 critical care doctors or intensivists are available in Pakistan and the country needs 500 more intensivists to treat coronavirus patients.
Talking to PPI, Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, said no any government had paid attention in past to producing critical care experts to meet the requirements of the country; therefore, the federal and provincial governments had been facing acute shortage of intensivists after the declaration of the coronavirus emergency.
“About 50 to 70 critical care doctors are available in the country out of which a majority is practising in private hospitals,” he said.
He explained that an intensivist is a physician who specialises in the care of critically ill patients, mostly in the intensive care unit (ICU), adding that intensivist must be competent not only in a broad spectrum of conditions, common among critically ill patients but also with the technical procedures and devices (i.e. mechanical ventilators) used in the intensive care setting.
He said intensivists are often the leaders of multi-disciplinary teams of care providers to help coordinate, collaborate and facilitate providing evidenced-based outcomes. The team members consist of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists and other disease-specific experts.
He said although critical care doctors were available in major cities of Pakistan, including in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Faisalabad and Multan, but no intensivists were available at divisional and district level hospitals of Pakistan including Sindh.
Dr Mirza said the number of Covid-19 patients was sharply increasing throughout the country and experts feared a surge in cases in the future, so the importance of critical care doctors in isolation wards had also increased as compared to the past.
He said the provincial governments were expanding Covid-19 isolation wards in divisional and district level health facilities to cater to the growing number of corona patients at the local level, but how could isolation ward be setup without critical care doctors?
He demanded the hiring of 500 critical care doctors or intensivists on an urgent basis to overcome the shortage of experts in newly established Intensive care units and high dependency units all over the country.
