Stalled children hospital strains Pindi’s allied hospitals

The three hospitals currently have three child patients for each bed

RAWALPINDI: In the absence of a dedicated mother and child care hospital in the city, the three allied hospitals of the garrison city of Rawalpindi are groaning under the immense load of child patients it has to deal with.

The provincial health authorities have been unable to build a dedicated children’s hospital while the slow pace of work on the under-construction mother and child hospital has already drawn the ire of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

The children’s wards at the three largest public sector hospitals of Rawalpindi, including the Benazir Bhutto General Hospital (BBH), the Holy Family Hospital (HFH) and the District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ) have a total capacity of 223 beds reserved for children. However, these hospitals are currently catering to some 578 children on their limited bed-space, at an average of around three children per bed.

This poses a danger of infectious diseases spreading.

At the BBH, there are eight beds for children in the emergency ward. There are a further 10 beds in the intensive care unit (ICU), 20 in the nursery, and 85 beds in the children’s wards. Moreover, the hospital only has around 18 ventilators.

The child unit of the hospital has six registrars, seven medical officers, two consultants and 16 house officers.  At the HFH, there are just 12 beds in the emergency ward and 34 beds in the ICU and the children’s ward wards and 42 beds in the nursery but only seven ventilators. There are 12 associate professors, a consultant, four registrars, five female house officers and 18 postgraduate trainees along with 19 house officers.

The DHQ has planned to set up 42 beds which would be reserved for child patients in the hospital but work in this regard has been in process for the past five years.

The construction of the specialised children’s hospital has yet to kick off five years after the project’s plan had been unveiled.

The government had developed a project concept-I (PC-I) to build a specialized hospital for children in Rawalpindi along the lines of similar hospitals built in Lahore, Multan and Faisalabad.

But five years after work on the project was started, it remains locked in files. Curiously, the government had managed to fork out money to procure 900-kanals of land for the project near a fuel pump in Chaklala.

The provincial government had also reserved funds for the hospital in its annual public sector development projects (PSDP) budgets for the past two fiscal years with the health secretary declaring the that the development of a children hospital in Rawalpindi is indispensable.

But there has been little to no movement in the project on-the-ground.

According to health experts, the healthcare system of Rawalpindi has to bear the burden of patients not only from the district, but the entire Rawalpindi Division along with the rural areas of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and from surrounding regions such as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and even Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B). Hence, there is a dire need to develop a dedicated children’s hospital in the city which will provide treatment facilities for neonatal diseases and infections occurring after birth. Last year, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar had visited the under-construction Mother and Child Hospital in Rawalpindi.

Lamenting that the 10-year-old project was nowhere near completion, he directed that work on the project should be completed within a period of 18 months. Admonishing the Public Work Department’s (PWD) chief engineer for the poor quality of work, he had assured that funds necessary for the project will be released.

CJP Nisar had further promised to speak to the then caretaker prime minister over the matter to appoint focal persons for the project and to kick-start the staff induction and equipment purchase processes.

Pointing out that the iron rebars for the project had rusted, the CJP had urged the contractor to cooperate in completing the project. Moreover, he had offered the SC’s help to amend the rules as and where necessary and possible. The project includes a 480-bed hospital, a nursing college, a hostel and a colony for employees.

While construction material for the project, which had been transferred to the project site prior to CJP’s visit, was untouched until last month, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA from Rawalpindi Sheikh Rashid Shafique had explained that the process of collecting tenders had started and that work on the project was expected to start soon.

 

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2019.