The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is making legislation to create a burn accident prevention authority to make sure that public and private buildings have fire extinguishers installed and have plans in place for people to safely escape in the event of a fire.
Three meetings have reportedly taken place in this respect, and the health department and members of the provincial legislature are ready to enact a law and safeguard the safety of the populace, according to Prof. Tahmeedullah, Director Burns and Plastic Surgery Centre, Hayatabad Medical Complex.
The authority will be established on modern lines covering all aspects, he said. The passage of the law will make it mandatory for the owners of the markets, plazas and officials and private buildings to have smoke detectors and mechanism for exist of the people in case of fire, he said.
Because there are now no such provisions made in buildings, people are at risk of suffering burn injuries, which can have serious consequences, even death.
According to Dr. Tahmeed, the ratio of male to female burn victims is one to three, and women are especially vulnerable to burn injuries in intimate situations.
“Women stay in the kitchen in homes and sustain burn injuries due to cylinder blasts and other incidents. We are trying to impart training to nurses in management of burn cases,” he said.
He claimed that after graduating, they got a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Khyber Medical University to teach a one-year diploma in burn injuries to nurses. According to him, this will enhance the burn care needed by female patients.
“In Pakistan, there are 12 female trainee medical officers, which is the highest amount” . For residents of the province and ladies who have suffered burn injuries, he remarked, “it is quite encouraging.”
According to him, 2/3 of the 170,000 patients who attended the HMC’s burns center in the previous year were women and children. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has now completely funded the 120-bed center, which was operationally defined in 2018 with support from the US government.
According to Dr. Tahmeed, the majority of the patients at the center over the previous three years came from Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Waziristan, Chitral, Abbottabad, Swat, and Dir. He claimed that they were making an effort to build facilities there.
The director of the center announced that each of Mufti Mehmood Teaching Hospital, DI Khan, and Swat has a 20-bed unit set up to care for patients locally and refer the most serious cases to Peshawar. He said that with government assistance, burns units were being established in other districts.
According to him, the center is the only place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan has approved for the specialization of 21 doctors each year.
All patients undergo free operations and diagnostic procedures with the grant provided by the provincial government, he said, adding their center had also got the services of physiotherapists, psychologists, nutritionists and other experts to ensure rehabilitation of the patients.
