Sinking system: Karachi hospitals flooded amid cloudburst
The Met Office has predicted that the current spell with continue til Thursday (August 27). PHOTO: EXPRESS
As the metropolis witnessed its fifth spell of heavy downpour starting Tuesday, the city of 20 million has once again found itself on the short end of the infrastructural stick. Other than causing deadly urban floods and structural collapses, unforgiving monsoon showers have also inundated Karachi’s multiple public and private medical care facilities, leaving the city’s healthcare system in dire straits. Per initial reports, operations at several major facilities including The Civil Hospital Karachi, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Sobraj Maternity Hospital and The National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases have been severely affected due to accumulated rainwater.
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“Almost 50 per cent of the wards here including the accident ward, radiology department, the dental outpatient department and the cardiology ward have been completely flooded with rainwater and effluent waste. The smell is so bad that we can’t even step into the surgery ward anymore. It reeks of sewage,” shared a resident doctor at the Civil Hospital Karachi, on conditions of anonymity. According to hospital management, despite being one of the city’s largest tertiary care facilities, Karachi’s Civil Hospital lacks a proper drainage system. This puts the building at the risk of flooding, every time there is a heavy downpour in the city. “A majority of the hospital units were declared damaged well before the season’s rainfall, but no action was taken on that. It is a known fact that sewage lines here are choked and tattered and yet there have been no repairs for years. So it was inevitable for the hospital to be flooded with sewage waste,” said a member of the hospital administration. “The roof’s also started leaking and there’s water coming in from everywhere. There is a risk that stocks of drugs and vaccines may go bad, while lack of electricity and water accumulation has made it very difficult for hospital staff to keep working,” claimed another.
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On the other hand, speaking to The Express Tribune about the situation, Medical Superintendent Dr. Noor Kahmad Soomro said that the accumulation of rainwater in the hospital building is owed to blockage of the main sewerage system at Chand Bibi. “The blockage prevented rainwater from being drained out of the hospital. This obstructed several administrative matters and staff and patients both were severely inconvenienced by the flooding. However, we have managed to drain out up to 80 per cent of the accumulated water so far,” informed Soomro.
Government Efforts
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According to sources privy to the development, an emergency control room was established by the health department following Karachi’s monsoon forecast. However, no specific safety measures were announced by the control room nor were there any steps taken to deal with the emergency situation. Several other hospitals in the city, including The National Institute of Cardiology, National Institute of Pediatrics, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Sindh Government Hospital Liaquatabad, Lyari General Hospital and the Qatar Hospital were also severely affected by the season’s cloudburst. As a result, hundreds of patients across the city were deprived of access to medical facilities, leaving the city’s healthcare system in dire straits.