On life support: Situation getting from bad to worse at public hospital

Operations on hold as Jinnah hospital says it is running out of crucial supplies.

KARACHI:

In another desperate attempt to drum up media and public support Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) staff called another press conference, on Monday. Their demands remain the same but as each day goes by, they say the state of the institution worsens.

“We are out of oxygen, nitrous oxide and anaesthesia as well as some medicines. How can we operate under such circumstances?” asked co-chairman for the steering committee Dr Liaquat Ali. “At the end of the day people don’t know or care about the reasons, they will just hold the surgeon responsible if something goes wrong. So it is best not to operate than put a person’s life in danger.”

Members of JPMC have long opposed being handed over to the Sindh government. And 18 days since the new fiscal year began, the feeling of being jilted both emotionally as well as financially seems to have deepened. Knocking and then banging on the doors along the corridors of powers didn’t help as one official after another made encouraging promises but failed to deliver.

Former federal health minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada had all but declared that the teaching institute would not be devolved immediately but would take a transition period of perhaps up to two years. It has been a week since the newly inducted Sindh Secretary of Health Rizwan Ahmed promised the immediate payment of the hospital’s budget for the fiscal year 2011-2012. But JPMC’s administration says they have yet to see a paisa.

Amid this desperation, JPMC also doesn’t let any chance go by to point to the sorry state of some provincially run hospitals, especially Civil Hospital, Karachi (CHK). In many comparisons, CHK’s name is hauled up to argue that the Sindh government (as opposed to Islamabad) is incapable of taking care of its responsibilities. Jinnah hospital’s staff believes that it would prove disastrous to give the Sindh government th added responsibility of running three large institutions (JPMC, the National Institute of Child Health and the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases).

For its part, however, the children’s hospital has not been as active as JPMC or NICVD in protesting the change.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2011.