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A FEW weeks ago, someone shot a video on a smartphone of an old woman stripped of her dignity as she breathed her last, lying on a sheet spread on the cold floor of a Lahore hospital corridor as her daughter pleaded for a bed in the adjacent ward for her dying mother.
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As soon as the video made its way from social media to the TV news channels, the Punjab government sprang into action, suspended the medical superintendent and ordered an inquiry into the horrendous episode. We have yet to hear of the findings of that inquiry.
As we await the inquiry report, one Dawn reader, who has written to this columnist in the past also on an issue of public import, wanted to raise another dimension of the issue. I reproduce below the email of Dr Maryam R. Tarrar, who is an associate professor at Shalamar Medical and Dental College in Lahore:
Public-sector healthcare seems to be slipping below the radar in Punjab.
“Today I wish to write about a tragic incident, the death of an elderly lady in Jinnah Hospital Lahore corridors. She was turned away from two other hospitals of the city before she landed in JHL emergency in the early hours of the morning.
“From there she was shifted to Medical unit 1 where each bed was already occupied by two patients. She was terminally ill and had a woman relative as her attendant. She was unable to secure her shared place on a bed quickly. The on-duty medical staff tried to arrange a bed for her in vain before she breathed her last on the floor of the medical ward corridor.
“Her plight was recorded on a mobile phone and sent to a TV channel and the rest is history. An inquiry was commissioned and before its conclusion the MS [Medical Superintendent] of JHL was suspended, just a month after taking over charge.
“His only crime was heading an institution unable to cope with the increasing influx of patients and yet not being able to refuse admitting a patient. Heads of two other major teaching hospitals cleverly got away by turning away this patient from their doorstep.
“The suspended MS is the fifth head of a health facility in Punjab in as many months who has been scapegoated for the criminal neglect of the healthcare sector by successive governments. I feel that no honest and self-respecting senior medic may accept these risky assignments anymore.” (I have made minor edits for greater clarity and identified Dr Tarrar with her permission.)
This week, two other news stories lead one to believe that while the Punjab government and its key elected functionaries remain preoccupied with high-profile projects such as the Metro Bus and the various coloured commuter train lines, public-sector healthcare seems to be slipping below the radar. This would be tragic as it impacts the most vulnerable in society.
Earlier in the week, there was a story in the press about the scandalous sale of substandard ‘stents’ at extortionate prices to cardiac patients receiving treatment, including angiographies, at the cardiology department of Lahore’s Mayo Hospital.
FIA has been reportedly assigned to investigate the case where these substandard stents were being sold at some medical stores, right outside the Mayo Hospital, where patients’ attendants and carers were allegedly sent by some cardiology department staff members to buy them.
Apart from being substandard and posing more of a threat to the cardiac patients than helping them prolong and lead a better quality of life, these stents were exchanging hands in cases at 10 times the normal price. The harassed and rushed relatives were paying up not knowing the true situation.
Then, as the weekend was approaching, a news story in Dawn about Supreme Court proceedings said the court was informed that at Lahore General Hospital seven out of 17 ventilators were not working. Ventilators are considered essential life-saving equipment. This forced the staff to use ‘ambu bags’ on patients requiring intensive care.
Normally, these bags are used to manually assist a patient’s breathing while he/she is being transported to an accident/emergency department at a designated hospital. There was also mention of dysfunctional ventilators at the children’s ward ICU at the same hospital.
Admittedly, these specific instances may not be representative of the larger picture, but in case they are then an alarming situation is developing in Lahore right under Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s nose and not in some remote, obscure town in the outer reaches of the province.
The chief minister has built an aura of efficiency and delivery around his own self and these instances threaten to explode this image as a myth if not addressed with the urgency it warrants. Many critics will say, if this is the state of play in the Punjab capital, what about places far from the probing eyes of journalists?
The Supreme Court has also heard in the Panama Papers petitions, seeking the disqualification of the prime minister from holding office, of the magnitude of the wealth and the sheer size of the financial transactions of the Sharif family. The sums involved are beyond the imagination of the common voter.
And the voters also know their leaders — whether it is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or his brother, the Punjab chief minister, or former president Asif Ali Zardari — all take plane rides out of Pakistan for treatment and even routine medical check-ups at pricey and state-of-the-art medical centres in the UK and US.
Isn’t it about time all our leaders tried to make sure, via adequate budgetary allocation and exemplary governance, that nobody else dies on the floor of a hospital corridor? If images such as the one of the dying woman don’t haunt our leaders, what will? What else will spur them into action?
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1309657/an-image-to-haunt-shahbaz-sharif
@Zaki @pk4user @notorious_eagle @Spring Onion @Doordie @SherDil
Advertisement
As soon as the video made its way from social media to the TV news channels, the Punjab government sprang into action, suspended the medical superintendent and ordered an inquiry into the horrendous episode. We have yet to hear of the findings of that inquiry.
As we await the inquiry report, one Dawn reader, who has written to this columnist in the past also on an issue of public import, wanted to raise another dimension of the issue. I reproduce below the email of Dr Maryam R. Tarrar, who is an associate professor at Shalamar Medical and Dental College in Lahore:
Public-sector healthcare seems to be slipping below the radar in Punjab.
“Today I wish to write about a tragic incident, the death of an elderly lady in Jinnah Hospital Lahore corridors. She was turned away from two other hospitals of the city before she landed in JHL emergency in the early hours of the morning.
“From there she was shifted to Medical unit 1 where each bed was already occupied by two patients. She was terminally ill and had a woman relative as her attendant. She was unable to secure her shared place on a bed quickly. The on-duty medical staff tried to arrange a bed for her in vain before she breathed her last on the floor of the medical ward corridor.
“Her plight was recorded on a mobile phone and sent to a TV channel and the rest is history. An inquiry was commissioned and before its conclusion the MS [Medical Superintendent] of JHL was suspended, just a month after taking over charge.
“His only crime was heading an institution unable to cope with the increasing influx of patients and yet not being able to refuse admitting a patient. Heads of two other major teaching hospitals cleverly got away by turning away this patient from their doorstep.
“The suspended MS is the fifth head of a health facility in Punjab in as many months who has been scapegoated for the criminal neglect of the healthcare sector by successive governments. I feel that no honest and self-respecting senior medic may accept these risky assignments anymore.” (I have made minor edits for greater clarity and identified Dr Tarrar with her permission.)
This week, two other news stories lead one to believe that while the Punjab government and its key elected functionaries remain preoccupied with high-profile projects such as the Metro Bus and the various coloured commuter train lines, public-sector healthcare seems to be slipping below the radar. This would be tragic as it impacts the most vulnerable in society.
Earlier in the week, there was a story in the press about the scandalous sale of substandard ‘stents’ at extortionate prices to cardiac patients receiving treatment, including angiographies, at the cardiology department of Lahore’s Mayo Hospital.
FIA has been reportedly assigned to investigate the case where these substandard stents were being sold at some medical stores, right outside the Mayo Hospital, where patients’ attendants and carers were allegedly sent by some cardiology department staff members to buy them.
Apart from being substandard and posing more of a threat to the cardiac patients than helping them prolong and lead a better quality of life, these stents were exchanging hands in cases at 10 times the normal price. The harassed and rushed relatives were paying up not knowing the true situation.
Then, as the weekend was approaching, a news story in Dawn about Supreme Court proceedings said the court was informed that at Lahore General Hospital seven out of 17 ventilators were not working. Ventilators are considered essential life-saving equipment. This forced the staff to use ‘ambu bags’ on patients requiring intensive care.
Normally, these bags are used to manually assist a patient’s breathing while he/she is being transported to an accident/emergency department at a designated hospital. There was also mention of dysfunctional ventilators at the children’s ward ICU at the same hospital.
Admittedly, these specific instances may not be representative of the larger picture, but in case they are then an alarming situation is developing in Lahore right under Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s nose and not in some remote, obscure town in the outer reaches of the province.
The chief minister has built an aura of efficiency and delivery around his own self and these instances threaten to explode this image as a myth if not addressed with the urgency it warrants. Many critics will say, if this is the state of play in the Punjab capital, what about places far from the probing eyes of journalists?
The Supreme Court has also heard in the Panama Papers petitions, seeking the disqualification of the prime minister from holding office, of the magnitude of the wealth and the sheer size of the financial transactions of the Sharif family. The sums involved are beyond the imagination of the common voter.
And the voters also know their leaders — whether it is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or his brother, the Punjab chief minister, or former president Asif Ali Zardari — all take plane rides out of Pakistan for treatment and even routine medical check-ups at pricey and state-of-the-art medical centres in the UK and US.
Isn’t it about time all our leaders tried to make sure, via adequate budgetary allocation and exemplary governance, that nobody else dies on the floor of a hospital corridor? If images such as the one of the dying woman don’t haunt our leaders, what will? What else will spur them into action?
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1309657/an-image-to-haunt-shahbaz-sharif
@Zaki @pk4user @notorious_eagle @Spring Onion @Doordie @SherDil
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