LAHORE: The Punjab government has released Rs2 billion to begin the construction of 1,000-bed phase-II of the Lahore General Hospital (LGH) along the Ferozepur Road near the Arfa Karim Tower.

The new mega project of the hospital has proposed five high-rise designated towers on the pattern of Arfa Kareem Tower at the 120 kanal land that earlier housed the Kot Lakhpat Fruit and Vegetable Market. It means that the new hospital will have vertical buildings instead of old horizontal pattern.

The total estimated cost of the project is Rs7bn, with June 2023 completion deadline. The Infrastructure Development Authority Punjab (IDAP) has been given a green signal to start the project.

The new infrastructure will help share the enormous burden of the LGH, which gets 7,000 patients daily at its heavily burdened emergency.

New vertical infrastructure to be built at site of Kot Lakhpat Fruit and Vegetable Market

According to the plan, some departments of the LGH, including the emergency department, would be shifted to its new infrastructure.

“Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi has released Rs2bn funds out of the total cost of Rs7bn,” Post Graduate Medical Institute Principal Prof Dr Al-farid Zafar told Dawn on Monday.

He said the new facility would also help cater the health needs of the patients coming from other cities like Kasur, Depalpur, Okara etc. He said Arfa Karim Tower was one of the tallest buildings of the city and the new project of the LHG would also be constructed on the same pattern.

“Initially, we are going to construct a 200-bed accident & emergency tower,” Prof Zafar said and added that the new scheme would also have four other such towers for specialised healthcare treatment.

“It would have the first-ever multi-storey tower for infectious diseases, which would be designated not only for the treatment of the patients but also for research on infections.”

The PGMI principal said the institute would get services of highly qualified and trained experts for the research and added that a decision was made to establish a new infectious disease tower keeping in view the recent outbreaks of many infectious diseases like Covid-19, dengue, Congo fever etc, he said.

“We are also planning to construct a cardiac tower, another new facility, for the heart patients,” Prof Zafar said.

Unfortunately, the LGH was unable to establish cardiac, cancer/oncology and pediatric surgery departments since establishment of the mega teaching hospital.

He said the institute was trying to provide the missing facilities in the upcoming new 1,000-bed teaching hospital. Similarly, a tower would house surgery and medical units.

“We have held a crucial meeting with a donor who is ready to provide 200 new dialysis machines, which would help the hospital have the largest kidney department in any public sector hospital of the province.”

He said that there was a plan to start the bone marrow transplant facility, another first initiative of the proposed project.

To a question, Prof Dr Al-farid Zafar said he held an important meeting to review the construction plan on Monday.

In the meeting, it was decided that the institute would shift the main emergency section from the old building of the LGH to the new tower. The old emergency unit would be dedicated only for the gyne and pediatric services while all the critical patients would be admitted to the new emergency tower only.

Talking about another salient feature of the newly proposed tower, he said it would have for the first time a 30-bed designated unit to keep the critical patients for recovery phase for two-to-three days.

The ambulances would be designated for transportation of the patients between the LGH-I and LGH-II, the PGMI principal said.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2022