LAHORE: The second full-fledged independent gastroenterology department in any public sector hospital in Punjab has started functioning at the Government General Hospital, Faisalabad.

After Lahore’s Shaikh Zayed Hospital, the 24-bed “Department of Gastroenterology and Therapeutic Endoscopy” at the GGH is being termed a largest facility to cater to the needs of patients living with deadly hepatitis C disease in Faisalabad that has over 8 million population.

According a health official, Faisalabad is the fourth city of Punjab which has the highest prevalence of the virus (HCV) after Gujranwala, Hafizabad and Gujrat.

Further describing an alarmingly high disease burden in the third largest city of Pakistan, he said eight per cent people of Faisalabad were living with active hepatitis C virus.

Earlier, he said, in the absence of the facility most of the hepatitis C patients of this city and those coming from surrounding areas have to visit Lahore or Islamabad to get the required treatment/medication.

One of the salient features of this independent unit is said to be the ‘development of therapeutic endoscopy’.

Senior gastroenterologist associate Prof Dr Hafiz Mughees Ather is its head who has to his credit four postgraduate degrees, including FCPS and MRCP besides ERCP fellowship from abroad.

Dr Ather is said to be the second senior-most medic heading a department as a gastroenterologist in state-run teaching hospitals in Punjab as most of such units are working under medical departments, with professors of medicine heading them instead of gastroenterologists.

Functioning 24/7, the department at the Government General Hospital also houses a liver clinic and a liver transplant referral unit for critical hepatitis C patients.

The department also opens a ray of hope for postgraduate students of Faisalabad to get training at this advanced gastroenterology training center as it has been accredited by the University of Health Sciences for MD gastroenterology and by CPSP for FCPS part 2 training (in gastroenterology).

Dr Mughees Ather says the gastroenterology is one of the most dynamic specialties of internal medicine. For him, the provision of therapeutic endoscopy services is a major initiative. “There is a huge deficiency in the field of therapeutic endoscopy services in government sector hospitals,” he told Dawn.

He said as the government sector hospitals were lagging behind in this vital facility, most of the patients requiring therapeutic endoscopy were forced to travel to Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad, resulting in huge expenses.

“The therapeutic endoscopy is the treatment of diseases with the help of endoscopy through natural orifices without cutting the tummy, dissection or surgery for those patients who have problems in the stomach and gut,” says Prof Mughees Ather.

According to him, this is an era of minimum invasive surgery i.e. minimum cutting/dissection and suturing of the tissues leading to minimum rate of complications besides minimum hospital stay and low infection rate.

“There are a large number of patients who have narrowing of their food pipes either due to intake of acids or tumor or prolonged acid disease. “With the help of endoscopy, their food pipe can be opened without surgical procedure”, he says.

Another group of patients are those who have bleeding from stomach, who previously used to have an emergency surgery leading to high cost and complications.

“Now with the help of therapeutic endoscopy gadgets, we can stop the bleeding without open surgery”, says Dr Ather.

He said that Faisalabad Medical University Vice Chancellor Prof Zafar Ali Chaudhry had supported his department by making available 11 scopes and work stations during a short span of last 10 months along with a trained team of medics.

“We have done 1500 free-of-cost endoscopic procedures, including opening up and stenting of narrow food pipes due to corrosives intake and tumor besides endoscopic clipping of bleeding ulcers and injection of large gastric variceal bleeding lesions”, he said.

In addition, he says, the department has successfully done successful ERCP procedures during a short span of time.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2020