Operations at PIC remain suspended three days after lawyers attack

LAHORE: With only the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) functioning, medical treatment facilities at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) remained suspended for the last three-days after a mob of lawyers attacked it.

Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Usman Buzdar could not live up to his word that the hospital would start its routine function from Friday onward.

Patients breathed a sigh of relief when the ICU started operating with free medicines available to the patients two days after the attack, while they remain in distress over the operations and test-running facilities still being at halt.

Nurses and paramedical staff have started coming in while doctors have still not joined the workplace since the attack.

“The attack cost the hospital a whopping loss of Rs70 million” said PIC’s chief executive Dr Saqib Shafi, “we will try our best to make the emergency ward functional by today.”

He also informed that two lives were lost in the attack.

Protests, which were held across government hospitals, have backed Pakistan Medical Association’s (PMA) demand for the security bill.