Patients lament lack of facilities at Ghazi hospital

Citizens ask authorities to take note of an abysmal state of affairs at health facility

HARIPUR:

Patients visiting the Ghazi Tehsil Headquarters Hospital have been facing problems as the health facility lacks basic facilities as well as medicine.

They demanded that the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chief minister and the health minister intervened and took notice of the poor state of affairs at the health facility.

Political and social activists including Anwar Shah Mashwani, Athar Khan Ghazi, Wajahat Saeed Hamad Khan and others from Sri Kot said that the hospital has no ward and doctors to tend to patients while the machinery and equipment have run down. They said that the X-ray machine of the hospital has been out of order for the last five months and patients have to visit far off areas to get the X-ray procedure done.

The unavailability of hygiene kits, including gloves in the hospital is also compromising the health and safety of doctors and patients alike.

There is no operation facility to perform C-section procedures due to which expecting mothers have to travel to the cities. The hospital also lacks maternal facilities and doctors to tend to patients visiting the set-up.

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The hospital’s pharmacy does not have medicines and is often closed for reasons best known to the hospital management. The pharmacy also lacks staff.

Patients, Hassan Gul, Shereen Khan and Samiullah said that the hospital lacked a dialysis facility and a 24/7 trauma centre and in the absence of these facilities they have to travel to Haripur hospital after paying a minimum rent of Rs2,000 to cabs.

The locals also claimed that the medical staff did not perform their duty while, because of meddling of politicians and vested interest in the hospital’s affairs, millions of rupees go into waste.

The hospital building is deteriorating due to the inattention of the management, they said.

The locals are of the view that it will be impossible to change the condition of the hospital unless the political influence was done away with and qualified people were recruited.

The residents said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had failed to change the condition of Ghazi tehsil hospital in the last eight years. Awami National Party leader Anwar Shah Mashwani said that the hospital building was dilapidated and needed urgent repairs. He appealed to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to resolve the issues facing the hospital and posted more doctors to facilitate the locals.

When contacted, the hospital management said that a letter has been written to the district health officer to address the staff shortage issue while the out-of-order machines will be repaired as soon as funds were released by the provincial government.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2021.