ISLAMABAD:
Even death has to be paid for at Shifa International Hospital.
An aggrieved son on Wednesday shocked the Senate Committee on Health with information that Shifa hospital had refused to hand over the body of his father until a fee of Rs320 was paid. The family received the body after two hours delay.
Alamgir Rehmat appeared before the health committee with a complaint that his 78-year-old father, Rehmat Ali, died in May due to “negligence” of Shifa hospital’s doctors, who gave the old man an overdose of anaesthesia.
“We paid them thousands of rupees for the treatment, so most definitely we could also pay them Rs320, but they (the hospital staff) had no place for value or professionalism,” Rehmat told the committee. “For them patients are like ATM cards,” he added.
His allegations were countered by an anaesthetic of Shifa hospital but he failed to satisfy the senators, who were already agitated at the Shifa hospital’s executive director for not appearing before the committee.
Rehmat’s case, coupled with personal experiences of some senators, drove the discussion into a revelation that no rules were ever made in Pakistan to register and regulate private hospitals. This was confirmed by a legal officer of Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), who admitted before the committee that no proposal or recommendations for such rules were ever prepared or forwarded to the government by PMDC.
Sharing his own experience with the committee, Senator Haji Adeel termed the hospital a ‘five-star hotel’ and claimed that it was not only overcharging people, but its administration was more interested in earning money than taking care of its patients.
“I kept waiting for four hours in the hospital’s emergency ward, vomiting and with symptoms of a possible drug reaction, but the doctors did not attend to me till my driver pulled out money from my pocket and paid them,” Adeel said.
Senator Zahid Khan observed that doctors at the hospital do not bother to inform attendants or relatives about their patient’s health developments during and after surgery, which is against the norms of medical practice.
Upon enquiry, a representative of the hospital informed the committee that Shifa International Company Pvt. Ltd is not a trust, however, he did not know if Shifa hospital was built on the land donated to Shifa Trust, an entity established to dispense free healthcare facilities to people.
The committee directed the Ministry of Health to form a panel of four health experts to investigate the death of Rehmat’s father and sought a comprehensive report from Shifa hospital within a week.
The senators were shocked to know that the hospital was charging Rs20,000 as room rent for a day. Rehmat also informed the committee of a patient who was kept for 40 days at the hospital for treatment, charged Rs60,000 to Rs70,000 a day, and was discharged without an improvement in his condition.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 23rd, 2011.
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