Patients suffer as HFH's lifts malfunction

All newly installed elevators at Holy Family Hospital (HFH), the city's largest hospital, have developed faults, exposing the spending of a hefty amount of money on renovations and revamping and leaving the patients, attendants, staff and visitors in much inconvenience.

Patients are being manually transported to wards using stretchers via stairs. Notably, the only functional elevator is the old one in the emergency room.

HFH, which underwent a complete revamp at a cost of Rs3.5 billion and was closed to patients for approximately nine months, is now experiencing significant issues with its newly installed elevators. Despite repairs, the faulty elevators malfunction merely after two-hour intervals, rendering them unusable.

A visit to the hospital and detailed inspection of elevators in various departments, including emergency, outpatient department (OPD), surgery, medical, operation theatre (OT), neurosurgery, and others established that only one old elevator in the emergency department was working. The elevator in the OPD, which has been out of order for the last 18 years, also remained in a state of disrepair.

The breakdown of elevators has forced patients to be manually transferred to other wards on stretchers via stairs, causing them significant discomfort and pain. Additionally, the hospital staff and relatives of patients are also facing significant difficulties in transporting patients to different departments.

The newly revamped elevator connecting the main emergency area to the burn, surgical, physiotherapy and ortho-neuro wards, and the elevator connecting OPD and laboratory, OT and surgical eye ward were also found out of order.

Another elevator, which links OPD to the ENT ward and radiology, ultrasound, and X-ray departments, was also found dysfunctional. The remaining two elevators were also experiencing faults, the visit further revealed.

Sources claim that the newly installed elevators frequently collapse in different time intervals due to substandard quality.

However, the Medical Superintendent (MS) of HFH, Dr Ijaz Butt has attributed the issue to a technical fault, stating that it is being addressed.

He says the company, which installed elevators, is responsible for the maintenance. Acknowledging that minor faults do occur, the MS claimed that they [faults] are being promptly fixed and that all elevators will become operational shortly.

The ongoing elevator issues at Holy Family Hospital have raised concerns about the quality of recent renovations and the effectiveness of oversight in large-scale projects. With patients and hospital staff enduring significant hardship due to the malfunctions, questions are being asked about the accountability of the contractors responsible for the faulty installations.

As the hospital management works to resolve the technical faults, many are calling for a thorough investigation into the quality of the equipment and the renovation process to ensure that similar issues do not persist in the future.