Seven killed in bus-van crash

Bahawalnagar DHQ Hospital refers several injured to Bahawalpur, Lahore

BAHAWALNAGAR:

At least seven people were killed and 23 others injured in a traffic collision between a speeding bus and a passenger van.

The injured and bodies were shifted to the district headquarters hospital. However, seven of the injured were referred to Bajawalpur and Lahore because of shortage of doctors and medicines in the hospital. One of the injured lost his life on the way.

The local officials said the speeding bus going from Lahore to Fort Abbas hit the van coming from the opposite direction near Ada Ghajiani.

As a result, the van was destroyed and its seven passengers died, while 23 people were injured.

Five of the severely injured persons were referred to Bahawalpur and two to Lahore.

Local residents helped the patrolling police pull out the passengers trapped in the mangled van.

Rescue teams shifted the injured and bodies to the district headquarters hospital.

However, neither the duty doctor nor the on-call surgeon arrived immediately at the trauma centre of the hospital.

Local MPA Sohail Khan, thr Bahawalnagar deputy commissioner and the MS reached the DHQ hospital later.

Relatives of the injured also alleged that they had been forced to buy medicines from medical stores in markets.

An attendant of an injured patient, Mehdi Hasan, said morelives might have been saved if the doctors, medicines and functional ventilators had been available.

According to sources, ventilators were available in the Bahawalnagar DHQ Hospital but were not functional. They said the the distribution of medicines among patients had also been affected by mismanagement.

Local police, traffic and rescue service officials, including Rescue 1123 District Officer Rao Sharafat Ali, supervised the rescue operation.