SHC suspends sealing orders of Darul Sehat Hospital

Hospital’s lawyer contends healthcare commission does not have authority to seal the facility

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has suspended the order of the Sindh Health Care Commission (SHCC) to seal the Darul Sehat Hospital and summoned a response from the commission's board, chief secretary, health secretary and the Advocate-General on the hospital administration's plea against the "extreme action without notice".

The petition was heard by Justice Junaid Ghaffar, before whom the lawyers representing the hospital management, Salahuddin Ahmed and Salam J Mirza, presented the suit for declaration, injunction and damages.

The plaintiff's counsel told the court that "while providing treatment to Nashwa Ali, a mishap occurred and apparently, some wrong dosage was injected by the Nursing Staff on duty". This much had been conceded by the hospital management earlier, which had also offered to pay to cover all the expenses incurred on the child's treatment.



After Nashwa's father, Qaiser Ali, had registered a complaint with the SHCC, a team was constituted that visited the hospital for inspection and suggested the future course of action.

Justice Ghaffar quoted the hospital's lawyer as saying that the SHCC's report was issued on March 23, 2019, and listed five recommendations for the hospital. These pertained to "initiating disciplinary proceedings against the concerned staff… termination of recruitment in-charge, certain directions in respect of the nursing staff, imposition of Rs500,000 fine and direction to the management to constitute a code blue team as per international recommendations."

The counsel added that the hospital had complied with all the recommendations immediately. Nevertheless, the SHCC had then ordered to seal the facility. In fact, the counsel pointed out, there was no proper order on record but simply a hand-written note on the Memorandum of Sealing which stated that the action had been taken in compliance of the order from the health minister.

The counsel argued that there was no provision for a minister to exercise such powers and even the commission itself did not have the authority to undertake such an action, except under Section 18, which wasn't applicable in this case. According to the law regulating the functions of the SHCC, Section 18 empowers the commission to "suspend the licence of a healthcare establishment if repeated cases of medical negligence of same nature have proved against the healthcare establishment".

The memorandum of sealing, issued by the SHCC in this case, made reference to Section 39 (1)(a), which dealt with action against quacks. "It has nothing to do with the plaintiff's hospital and its sealing," said the counsel.

After hearing the arguments, the court ordered the suspension of the SHCC's order to seal the hospital, while directing it to comply with the commission's recommendations. In the meantime, the court also summoned replies from the defendants by May 25.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th, 2019.