Inadequate healthcare: What do you do when all you have left is a prayer?

As allied hospitals in Pindi run dry of meds, doctors blame low budget.

ISLAMABAD:

The medicine for Aqsa Bibi’s* husband for a week costs Rs1,000. She earns just Rs2,000 in a month. As she stood outside the main gate of Holy family Hospital on Thursday, she told The Express Tribune that the hospital provided medicine to them free of charge for a few weeks, and then stopped.

Now she doesn’t know where she will get the money to buy the medicine from.

Bibi is one of the many disadvantaged people in Rawalpindi district either being denied access to health facilities or asked to buy their own medicine. The problem is not new, it has been going on for years.

Like her, many others visiting public health institutes are being denied access to basic health facilities or being told to buy their own medicines.”There has been a shortage of medicines in the allied hospitals of Rawalpindi for about five years, which has become acute in the last two years,” said Young Doctors Association Rawalpindi President Dr Umer Saeed.

Health practitioners working in the Rawalpindi district health institutes said Paracetamol, medicines for seasonal infections, anti-rabies/snake bites to routine immunisation for children are not available in 98 basic health units, five tehsil headquarter hospitals and eight Rural Health Centres of Rawalpindi district. All said they had raised the issue with their superiors several times now.

A doctor, asking not to be named, said most centres in the district do not even have fresh injections. “This forces many to recycle syringes, which can spread
many deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C among others,” he said.

A report released by Free and Fair Election Network said 145 dispensaries across the country were found deprived of basic health equipment in October this year. Of these, 65% dispensaries do not have sterilisers and one-third third lacked syringe-cutters.

Furthermore, the items indispensable for protection from germs and transmission of communicable diseases like sterilisers and syringe-cutters were not available, nor were free medicines prescribed by doctors. As many as 126 dispensaries were found to be without medicines.

Seventy-six patients interviewed at the dispensaries reported they did not get free medicines from the in-house pharmacy as per doctors’ prescriptions while 32 complained of overcharging. All state-run health facilities are supposed to provide these medicines free of cost.

The report said the condition of buildings housing 67 dispensaries was not good while 43 did not have boundary walls and 30 were not clean.

*Name has been changed

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2011.