Over 500 people with broken bones brought to Karachi hospitals daily

As many as 500 people are daily brought to different public and private hospitals in Karachi with multiple traumatic injuries or broken bones due to road accidents, health experts said on Friday, adding that some 15 to 20 per cent of these people become permanently disabled. 

Around 80 per cent people taken to Karachi’s hospitals with traumatic injuries are young motorcyclists, who suffer poly-trauma injuries, experts said, adding that millions of rupees are daily spent on the treatment of these injured people, who need surgeries, implants and medication on a daily basis.

“On average, around 125 people with traumatic injuries are brought to the trauma centre of the Civil Hospital Karachi alone on every single day. The majority of them are young motorcyclists, who don’t follow traffic rules and become permanently disabled due to their carelessness,” Dr Badruddin Sahito, head of the orthopaedics department at the Civil Hospital Karachi, told an international conference.

Hundreds of trauma surgeons, medical specialists and students are attending the two-day 36th International Pak Orthocon 2023 of the Pakistan Orthopaedic Association, which is being organized by the People’s University of Medical and Health Sciences for Women, Nawabshah in Karachi.

Issues of bones, including trauma, infections, joint replacements, bone health issues of women, children and elderly as well as advancements in the field of orthopaedics, are being discussed at the two-day moot where hundreds of research papers and studies are being presented by the national and international speakers, organisers said.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO), road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5-29 years, while approximately 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes. More than half of all road traffic deaths are among vulnerable road users: pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, WHO fact sheet on road traffic trauma injuries says.

Prof Badruddin Sahito deplored that trauma injuries are “not considered as diseases” and so no preventive measures are taken to prevent people from getting injured on the roads in Pakistan, saying millions of rupees could also be saved by preventing road accidents as well as youngsters could be prevented from becoming disabled for the rest of their lives.

“We need to ensure that rules are followed on the roads. Pakistani motorcyclists are the most reckless drivers as they lack licences, training and care for their own lives. Getting killed or becoming physically disabled is also a cause of trauma for the families of young people,” Dr Sahito added.

A former head of the orthopedics department at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Prof Ghulam Mehboob, said the dilapidated condition of roads, untrained motorcycle drivers and failure in implementation of traffic rules was the major reason behind traumatic injuries in Pakistan and urged parents not to allow young boys to ride motorcycles on the roads.

“In case a young boy is killed or badly injured in a road accident, his parents should be put behind bars for negligence,” Prof Mehboob demanded and urged the traffic police to strictly implement the traffic laws to prevent deaths and disability due to trauma in Pakistan.

Renowned knee replacement surgeon Dr Shahid Noor said old age, obesity, family history and previous trauma were some of the risk factors for the problems of knees, but only 5 percent of people with knee pain require knee replacements while the rest of them could be treated with medications and therapies.

He maintained that knee replacement improves the quality of live if it is carried out by an experienced and trained surgeon, top quality implants are used and the hospital where these procedures are performed have the best infection prevention and control practices in place.

The chairman of the scientific committee of the conference, Prof Asadullah Makhdoom, said experts from United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Turkey, Middle Eastern countries and Far East Asia were presenting new techniques and their work at the conference to train young Pakistani orthopaedic surgeons and specialists, adding that it would improve the healthcare practices in the area of orthopedics in Pakistan.

Another renowned orthopedic consultant from Lahore Prof Faisal Qamar said irrational and prolonged use of antibiotics for the treatment of bone infections was resulting in Anti-Microbial Resistance. He warned that if this trend continued, no antibiotic medicine would be able to treat simple infections of the people.

Urging people to become physically active, take a balanced diet and drink milk, eat yogurt and cheese for meeting the calcium and vitamin D requirements, he said many bone injuries and problems were preventable although issues of bones and joints are age related.