The Sindh government has began building of Pakistan’s largest cardiac hospital, which will be located in Karachi’s Korangi neighbourhood.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Foreign Minister and Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), placed the foundation stone for the cardiac care centre, which will be named after PPP founder and former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The 1,200-bed hospital would be erected across 55 acres at a cost of Rs 23 billion over the next five years.

Syed Murad Ali Shah, Chief Minister of Sindh, told the crowd at the groundbreaking event that the new hospital will include 16 big and small operating theatres, as well as 18 cardiac catheterisation laboratories.

He stated that the facility, in addition to providing cutting-edge cardiac treatment services, would also do research on veterinary care.

Shah said the construction of the hospital reflected the vision of the Sindh government to expand public health and educational facilities to serve underprivileged families in the best possible manner.

He informed the audience that existing public hospitals, trauma centres, ambulance services, and treatment facilities for children and women were being expanded for serving the people of Sindh.

He mentioned that earlier the satellite facilities of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in Karachi had been built across the province with the aim that no heart patient should be deprived of compulsory cardiac care due to financial constraints.

He said treatment services provided by the NICVD were free of charge.

Shah told the audience that his government had been providing funding to the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) in Karachi that with 380 machines was the largest public sector dialysis facility in the country. He said the SIUT had been conducting 1350 dialysis sessions every day.

He disclosed that SIUT so far had performed 6844 kidney transplant procedures so once the transplantation was performed both the organ donor and recipient received lifelong follow-up healthcare services and medicines.