RIP Nishwa!

With little Nishwa having gone into eternal slumber barely nine months after her birth, calls have grown for a robust care system at hospitals as well as a proper system of accountability over medical malpractices. The infant passed away yesterday after she was left paralysed earlier this month on being allegedly injected with a wrong dose of medicine at a private hospital in Karachi. “Please do something so that another person’s daughter is not lost like this” is the call from a grieving father who had taken her little daughter to the hospital for treatment of diarrhoea only to see her succumb to brain damage after fighting for life for two weeks.

Deaths by negligence are not new in our part of the world. Cases involving medical neglect on the part of doctors and paramedics are common occurrences, both at public and private hospitals. Print and electronic media are rife with reports of administration of wrong vaccines, use of expired drugs, wrong diagnosis and wrong treatment causing grave complications and even resulting in deaths. Even though so many cases of medical neglect go unreported, those reported make for alarming statistics. Just this month — and that too in Karachi alone — three deaths have occurred due to alleged medical negligence.

Medical negligence comes under the category of tort law whereby something wrong done to somebody — which is not criminal — can be taken to a civil court for action. The sufferer must report negligence to the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council which is empowered to cancel the licence of medical practitioners and take legal action against those involved in medical negligence. And on being found guilty of negligence or professional misconduct, criminal law as well as civil law can be set into motion against the negligent professional. There is a desperate need to make people aware that medical negligence cases must not go unreported.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2019.

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