KARACHI: The wholesale market of medical supplies at Lucky Star is the biggest place of its kind dealing in all kinds of instruments from a simple stethoscope to blood pressure and blood sugar level checking monitors and meters, arm slings, knee braces, cervical collars, wheelchairs, walkers and walking sticks, hospital beds, air mattresses, surgical instruments and what not?

There were just a couple of shops in Saddar dealing in this kind of stuff some 30 years ago when this market first came about, starting from one shop initially and then many more, which opened in its competition. That was when this area became the place to be for medical professionals and hospital staff for acquiring medical equipment and surgical instrument. But these days you also see common people frequenting the market comprising some 35 shops.

“The biggest selling product, among the 1,600 items available here, are the blood glucose meters, which patients come to buy themselves. It shows how conscious people are becoming towards their health. If only they’d taken a little more care maybe they wouldn’t even have needed to buy a meter in the first place,” Shahzad Ahmed of Quality Surgical says.

Next in line of popularity, according to the shopkeeper, are the blood pressure monitors followed by weighing machines. “There are manual machines and electronic machines. We have people who may have come looking for a manual piece of equipment but might settle for an electronic one,” he says.

As the prices go, of course, a manual piece of equipment would be far more cheaper. Blood pressure monitors may cost between Rs2,000 and Rs10,500. “We here are always willing to help a customer as much as we can. Just like when you are upgrading your mobile phone and need the salesman to show you how the new phone works we explain to our customers how the latest medical gadgetry works,” he says, while helping a customer try on a blood pressure cuff.

Karachi Surgicals, another shop among so many, claims to be the first one to have opened here. “My father was already dealing in surgical equipment since the 1970s when he expanded the business and bought two shops here in 1983. Today we have a versatile supply chain all over Pakistan. What we don’t have in our shop, we can arrange for in no time. We also issue authority letters to smaller dealers all over Pakistan,” says Muddassir Shaikh.

Most of the customers coming to Karachi Surgicals are hospitals and clinics. “We get customers who are building an operating theatre in their hospital for which we have an entire list of what they will need ready with us. Just yesterday we supplied furniture and electro-medical equipment for a gynaecology clinic,” he adds.

Right across is Zain Surgicals, with a misleading name as they specialise in wheelchairs, crutches, walkers and walking sticks. Speaking from experience, Zainuddin, the owner of the shop, says that most patients would refuse a wheelchair until it becomes impossible to move around without one. “They would rather lean on elbow sticks or tripod sticks. If those can’t provide the support they need, they may buy a walker but a wheelchair they’ll resist,” he says.

Most of the walking sticks and wheelchairs are made in China or Taiwan. “Pakistan also used to manufacture these but when comparing prices, the foreign wheelchairs proved far more economical and reliable as they were superior in quality as well,” the shop owner explains.

A lot of stainless steel tiffin lunch boxes and rice-serving dishes and pressure cookers greet you at Modi Surgical. Mahmood Hassan, the shop owner, laughingly explains that those are not tiffins, rice-serving dishes or pressure cookers. “They are apparatus for sterilising instrument,” he points out. “What you called rice-serving dishes are instrument trays. And these are containers to place the instruments in,” he says pointing towards the tiffins “before placing them inside the autoclave,” he says gesturing towards the pressure cookers.

In one corner, there are also bread toasters piled on top of each other, which the shop owner calls boilers. Well, through a layman’s eyes they seem like something else!

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2016