Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) cannot manage the daily flow of thousands of patients without stronger primary and secondary healthcare facilities in the federal capital, its newly appointed Executive Director Prof. Dr. Tanwir Khaliq said, calling for a referral system to direct only patients needing hospitalisation or surgery to tertiary-care hospitals.
Speaking at HBS Medical and Dental College’s VISIONARIES’26 Young Doctors Leadership Summit, Prof. Khaliq said around 14,000 patients had visited PIMS in a 24-hour period.
“No health facility in the world, can handle such a large daily influx without a functioning network of healthcare facilities to treat patients closer to home”, Prof. Tanwir Khaliq said.
He said primary and secondary facilities in Islamabad needed to be established and strengthened so that tertiary-care hospitals such as PIMS could focus on seriously ill patients requiring specialised treatment, admission or surgery.
Prof. Khaliq, who is also Vice Chancellor of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University (SZABMU), said gaps in hospital care had contributed to the circumstances surrounding the fire at PIMS several weeks ago. The blaze at the hospital’s maternal and child health centre on August 26 killed 14 newborns.
He also urged medical students to make research and innovation a priority, saying Pakistan remained heavily dependent on other countries for medical devices and surgical supplies. He named joints, sutures, staples and surgical robots among products that, he said, were not being manufactured locally.
Prof. Khaliq said Pakistan and much of the Islamic world, with Malaysia as an exception, were not producing enough medical innovations. He lamented what he described as a lack of Pakistani contributions to leading British and American surgery journals and prominent publications such as the British Medical Journal, saying the last articles he recalled had appeared during the Covid-19 period.
He encouraged students to pursue clinical research and said the Higher Education Commission and SZABMU were willing to provide grants of up to Rs1 million for research projects. Artificial intelligence could support research, he said, but its use should be guided by ethical standards.
Addressing the future doctors, Prof. Khaliq also urged them to uphold ethical conduct and empathy in their professional lives.
Health Services Academy Vice Chancellor Prof. Shahzad Ali Khan told students to pursue purposeful lives and serve humanity through their medical careers. He said success did not always bring happiness and urged them to remain positive and avoid people who discouraged them.
Prof. Shahzad Ali Khan encouraged students to think ambitiously and use their imagination to pursue goals beyond the ordinary. Knowledge had limits while imagination did not, he said. He added that artificial intelligence could perform computations but could not replace the emotional understanding of human beings.
Referring to the Santiago theory of cognition, he urged future doctors to approach patients with passion and empathy, saying people usually sought medical help when they were in pain or distress and relieving their suffering was a noble service.
HBS Chairman Dr. Riaz Shahbaz Janjua also urged students to become honest, professional and compassionate doctors who remained committed to their work.
Prof. Dr. Mowadat Hussain Rana, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences, also addressed the students. The summit’s programme included sessions on young doctors’ leadership and wellbeing. The event was held at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts in Islamabad on October 13 under the theme “Inspire | Transform | Impact.”
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