Willful negligence?

An infant, who was taken to hospital with complaints of diarrhoea, has exited the hospital in a paralysed state after an allegedly untrained hospital staffer administered an incorrect dose of medicine to her. The traumatic incident took place, not in any remote corner of the country, but in the heart of Karachi at a facility which serves as a tertiary care teaching hospital. The child, one of the twins, was treated with an injection which was to be administered in drip form over the course of 24 hours, and that caused the unintended reaction of paralysis. The child had to be shifted to the ventilator and breathed with assisted support for a week.

Subsequently, the Sindh Chief Minister took notice of the matter and directed the provincial health minister to intervene. The minister, in turn, asked for a complaint to be lodged with the healthcare commission. The matter was also raised in the Sindh Assembly. Such cases have been happening with regular frequency but the government has not been able to devise and implement standard operating procedures regarding staffing and patient handling at hospitals and to regulate the overall quality of medical care provided to the public.

The staffer in question was actually hired to just clean the beds, but was handling patients. Devising SOPs alone will not solve the issue, especially at private healthcare institutions in the megalopolis. The government must also come up with means to actively review the extent to which they are being followed. In this regard, the Sindh government should strengthen its healthcare bodies to conduct frequent and snap checks in hospitals in both public and the private sectors to ensure that standards pertaining to patient care and treatment are maintained.

Only this way can the Sindh government ensure universal care at a level which actually helps save lives, and not take them. 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2019.

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