Prolonged hospital closure irks patients

The Holy Family Hospital (HFH) – Rawalpindi’s largest public sector healthcare facility – has been undergoing renovations and upgrades worth Rs2 billion since October 2023.

Originally slated for completion in three months, the hospital has been closed for four months, causing strain on other government healthcare facilities. It is feared that the work will once again surpass the delayed deadline of February 2024.

Patients transferred to Benazir Bhutto General Hospital (BBH), District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ), Red Crescent Hospital, and Rawalpindi Institute of Urology and Transplantation (RIUT) are encountering overloaded medical systems, extended appointment waiting times, and shortages of medicines.

Each of these hospitals was already burdened before having to shoulder the traffic of another hospital. BBH and DHQ, handling the increased patient load, and report queues in OPD and emergency departments.

Queues of patients have assembled in the OPD and emergency department, while patients approaching the surgery and orthopaedic departments are being given appointments of three to four months from now.

Shortage of medicines has also been reported in the two hospitals. Even patients admitted to the hospital are suffering from a lack of essential medicines’ availability. They are forced to buy medicines by visiting external pharmacies.

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Moreover, the number of available beds is also limited. This is especially the case with Benazir Bhutto General Hospital's urology department, which is quite overburdened, and patients are being made to wait for operation dates and admissions well in advance.

Out of the four hospitals that patients have been relocated to, only two of them offer CT scan facilities. Whereas none of them have MRI machines. The only MRI machine in a public hospital currently sits locked up in the HFH premises.

At HFH, patients were able to get MRI tests done for a minimal amount of Rs4,000 to Rs5,000. This is much cheaper compared to the private hospital's rates for MRI tests, which range from Rs15,000 to Rs20,000 and is currently the only alternative patients have.

Similarly, the HFH has a large pathology lab, and its patients are now facing difficulty in finding test dates at the only two labs in the other public hospitals.

The renovation work that was expected to be complete by February, by the looks of it will continue for another one and a half months. Until then, other hospitals will continue to bear the additional burden and patients will struggle to find adequate facilities.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2024.