Neglectful care

A visit to the doctor is usually expected to make a sick person feel better. In our country just the opposite is often true. Medical neglect in one form or the other is virtually a daily occurrence in the country and it is rare for the doctors concerned to be acted against or their misdoing reported by patients in a bid to gain justice. This, of course, is precisely the reason the issue of negligence has received relatively little attention, with doctors, secure in the knowledge that they are safe not acting with, perhaps, the degree of care and caution that is part of their profession. The move made by a patient in Rawalpindi to take a doctor at a private clinic before the consumer court may help alter this.

In March 2011, the patient who is a trader, visited the doctor complaining of high fever. The doctor, reportedly watching a cricket match on TV, administered an injection. Some days later, the trader, who had felt acute pain as the shot was administered, noticed his arm was becoming paralysed. It appeared that he had suffered from nerve damage. No longer able to run his shop because of his condition, the man approached the consumer court. The doctor, who had initially agreed to pay damages, later refused to do so. The case continues.

The consumer court route is an interesting one and could open up new possibilities for patients. Laws on medical negligence exist and the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council and the Pakistan Medical Association are empowered to monitor standards of healthcare education and provision; but their role has not been very effective. For patients who have suffered neglect — or in the worst cases such as that of three-year-old Imanae Malik who lost her life at a Lahore Hospital after being given a lethal injection following a minor scald injury — justice can be hard to find. This means that the case brought by the trader and its eventual outcome has a particular significance.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2012.