Medical students impress in HOPES Health Expo 2020

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi 
(Pakistan News & Features Services) 

The fifth edition of the HOPES Health Expo, held at the Karachi Expo Centre on January 5, was dominated by the impressive performance of the undergraduate medical and dental students of the Karachi Medical and Dental College (KMDC). 

The thousands of visitors from different corners of the city, arriving at the different stalls set up in Hall No 2 of the Karachi Expo Centre during the 12-hour event, were thoroughly impressed by the enthusiasm and the earnestness of the KMDC students as well as the few practicing doctors present on the occasion. 

The stalls for different diseases and ailments were arranged to facilitate the visitors who were checked and attended by a group of KMDC students, who were observed treating the patients with incredible perseverance. 

Many of those having been screened, examined and attended by the tidy and courteous medical students were highly satisfied with the personalized treatment and counselling offered to them, free of cost, on the occasion. 

In fact, quite a few of the visitors, particularly those availing the services for the first time, acknowledged to have been pleasantly surprised with the high quality of services during free consultation and awareness sessions on more than 20 medical and dental specialties. 

The trained volunteers manned more than 20 types of free screenings which were made available with the collaboration of some of the country’s reputed institutions. 

The Help of Patients in Exigency by Students (HOPES), a non-political patient welfare organization managed solely by the undergraduate medical and dental students of the KMDC, succeeded in organizing the annual Health Expo successfully for the fifth time running. 

The students-run organization HOPES is based at Abbassi Shaheed Hospital since 1994. It has been providing free of cost medical and diagnostic facilities to the patients of the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases and the Karachi Medical and Dental College. They are reported to have dispensed medicines worth more than Rs 100 Million during its more than 25 years of existence. 

The first-ever HOPES Health Expo was held on January 24, 2016 and since then it has been organized every year during the month of January. Its aims and objectives include addressing the health issues of community, promotion of healthy lifestyle and to bridge the gap between society and health workers.