While travelling inside Pakistan, this question used to be on my mind that what if we have medical emergency how are we going to get help. Although majority of bigger towns and cities have hospitals but where and with which capabilities. It may seen to be no significant issue unless you are in that situation where you need a medical help.
Presently people usually avoid getting help until they reach familiar areas and then they seek help or else they call their friend to get the info. Other times friends calls other people to get that info or simply we go to any drug store and try temporary relief till we reach the area that we know about. We also ask people and police regarding the hospitals and at times either they are not able to help or we are too scared to ask.
For last 2 years I continued to ponder on it and wanted to provide solution utilizing the internet. I also wanted to document all the hospitals on map as free service to people and the reason was simple; this is one of the essential information and should be available.
We started working on this project with no resources and expertise. Only vision and the commitment to ourselves. We tried forming teams but people were reluctant as they would see no income potential. So finally we had a team and after some thinking we started working on it about 1 year ago. It was a slow work due to lack of proper expertise, now it has taken some shape. We have slowly increased our coverage to about 40% area of Pakistan.
Now we want to share this effort with common people and start offering all to see this efforts. One should be able to locate most of the hospitals on the map. Our effort is to help people get information regarding the health care facility and services offered by them.
What I require of all my readership is to go through the map and help us make it complete, so if You know off any hospital and you don’t see that on the map, please email us and let us know and we will add that place after verification .This way you are helping us to establish a service that is useful in cases of dire needs. We are also going to display the available phone numbers of the facility so in case you can get to the facility for any reasons you will be able to call.
I am hopeful that it will serve as a template for others to follow. Others are welcome to capture the idea and built on it.
I can be reached at erdoc@shifa.com.pk
you can see list of hospitals at hospitals.emergencymedicineforum.org