All dressed up and no equipment to go

LARKANA: The teaching hospital that caters to people from three provinces will soon be boasting of a newly equipped Thalassemia centre and burns unit.

According to the medical superintendent (MS) of the Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), Dr Zulfikar Siyal, the centres were completed by June 30 and will hopefully be open to the public in August.

Some officials in the CMCH alleged that four ADP schemes for teaching hospitals in the province have “hit snags” because the health department did not use the funds marked for the development till the very end of the last budget year. While the MS did corroborate that the Thalassemia centre and burns units at CMCH were only completed by the end of June, the last month of the budget year, he had no complaints. “It is a great thing that the Sindh government is working for the development of a teaching hospital like Chandka,” he said.

While the unhappy officials, who requested anonymity, also complained of late equipment and instruments, Dr Siyal said that all transactions had been made and the deliveries too would be completed in the first two weeks of July. “The health department told us to expect them by July,” he said, adding that the equipment was not really needed at once since the centres had only just been completed.

However, sources in the health department said that the equipment did not arrive in time for distribution among the hospitals of the province due to ‘poor execution’ by the administration. Officials in the department and at CMCH maintained that the four ADP schemes in this year’s budget will ‘suffer the same fate as that of the CT scan and MRI machines which were kept away from the beneficiary hospitals for years because of a conflict between the secretary health department and the health minister over commission.

The equipment that has to be delivered includes skin grafting knives, a skin-graft mesher, surgical instruments for the new wards, ECG machines, microscope, dialysis machines, ultrasound machines, ventilators, anaesthesia machines and sterilisation units. Officials alleged that the warrantee period of these machines will expire by the time they are actually installed and used for the benefit of patients.

Meanwhile, Dr Siyal said that installation and establishment of such instruments ‘takes time’, promising to have the wards open within two months.

The total revenue cost of CMCH equipment and instruments for the burns ward was Rs32.7 million while that for the Thalassemia centre was Rs 22.7 million. The urology and cardiology departments were also revamped and extended at costs of Rs23.4 million and Rs31.4 million, respectively. All these funds were retained by the health department, whereas the capital cost for constructing buildings was placed at the disposal of the CMCH MS.

“We used up all of the funds given to us,” said Dr Siyal. “As it is the money that we get is so little and our needs so many.” He said that in addition to the funds given to them by the government, the hospital also received around Rs10 million from Zakat funds and these too were used up for the hospital’s development.

“We still have so many requirements,” he said. “We have requested the government for a central oxygen system in the hospital.” According to the doctor, the hospital management has to run all their demands pass the health department. The department also supervises the use of money that is handed over to the hospital.

“Sometimes they listen to our demands, sometimes they don’t,” Dr Siyal told The Express Tribune.

The CMCH is one of the biggest hospitals in Larkana district. It caters to people in more than eight districts of upper Sindh, parts of Balochistan and also lower parts of Punjab. It has 1,250 beds, all of which are “always occupied”, said the doctor.

With additional reporting by Aisha Iqbal

Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2010.