‘Public hospitals lack freedom to plan projects’

The tertiary care public sector hospitals in Sindh are not being given the freedom to plan and execute the development projects themselves keeping in view their requirement.

It surfaced during a hearing of a petition, which concerned the dismal state of facilities at Liaquat University Hospital, in Sindh high court Hyderabad circuit bench during a hearing this week.

The bench noted that the same court had ordered the provincial government to provide single line budget to all tertiary care hospitals in LUH in its September 21, 2021, order. A director finance was also supposed to be appointed for those hospitals who would be the cosignatory in the budgetary matters with the head of a hospital's board, who was supposed to be a vice chancellor of the concerned university.

The compliance had to start from October, 2021. However, the petitioner's counsel Advocate Rehana Siddiqui and an additional medical superintendent of the LUH complained that none of the order has been implemented. She claimed that four to five children in the pediatric ward of the LUH are under compulsion to share a single bed because of disproportion in the available facilities and the admitted patients.

Likewise, she pointed out that the situation in the gynecological ward was also not different where often two women can be seeing receiving medical treatment on one bed. She told the court that the people from at least 13 districts of Sindh frequently visited both the branches of the LUH specially the one in Hyderabad for the outpatient, surgery and other treatments. She apprised the court that the population of those 13 districts combined was over 135.47 million, according to the population census 2017.

Sharing some other statistics, she informed that the LUH's administration claims that up to 11,o00 patients visit its OPD daily while its capacity for admitting the patients was 1,900. She argued that in view of the continuously growing influx of the patients the existing infrastructure appeared incapable as evident by the bed sharing problem.

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She said after a 2016 order of the court concerning the same matter of the tertiary hospitals, the Sindh Assembly legislated Management of Teaching Hospitals Act. The law transferred the administrative control of those hospitals to the vice chancellors of the concerned medical universities. A report submitted by an Additional Medical Superintendent of the LUH admitted that the shortage of staff also existed.

The AMS said the daily OPD was around 12,000 while they have 2,000 beds. "These aren't enough to cop-up with the flow of the patients," the AMS revealed. "The photographs and reports of the hospital as well as narration of the AMS are shocking and this is high time to interfere in this issue," the bench stated in its order.

The court directed the Sindh Secretary Health to work on the development project which have been submitted by the VC of Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, in capacity of the head of the board. "The Secretary shall personally visit both the hospitals and appear before this court with reasonable proposals and undertaking that how the situation will be catered," the court ordered.

The court referred to its September 21, 2021, order in which the Sindh Finance Secretary was asked to provide the single line budget was provided from October, 2021, to all the tertiary care hospitals. The court had also ordered that a Director Finance should be appointed for such hospitals and that those posts should be filled in 3 months.

Until those appointments were made any ranking administrative official would be co-signatory of the budget along with the concerned Medical Superintendent. The AMS apprised the court that despite clear directions in the September, 2021, order of the SHC the single line budget was not being provided to the hospitals.

The bench again ordered the provincial secretaries of health and finance to provide the said single line budget to all the tertiary care hospitals including the LUH. The hearing was adjourned to February 15.