Service delivery: Public hospital patients ‘made to buy drugs’

MS says all necessary medicines are available at hospital pharmacies.


Kashif Zafar June 11, 2012

BAHAWALPUR:


Less than a week after the chief minister’s announcement during his visit the to district that medicines were available free of cost at government hospitals, there are complaints from Bahawal Victoria Hospital and Zanana Jubliee Hospital, Bahawalpur, that doctors are prescribing medicines that are not available at the hospital.


Patients say they are prescribed medicines that were either short or not available at the hospital. They say they have no other option but to purchase them from pharmacies outside the hospitals.

A man, who was accompanying a patient at the gyne ward at the Bahawal Victoria Hospital, said patients who had doctors’ references were treated differently. He said poor patients and their families were made to suffer.

Dr Khalid Abbas Bukhari, principal and chief executive of Bahawal Victoria Hospital and Zanana Jubliee Hospital, said the matter of purchase and distribution of the medicine to the wards was dealt by the medical superintendent.

Bahawal Victoria Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Irshad told The Express Tribune that all 410 medicines were available at the hospital. He said he would take notice of the complaint.  He said sometimes some medicines could not be replaced with those available at the hospital. In that case, they had to be bought from other places.

He said action would be taken against doctors found unnecessarily prescribing medicines that were not available at the hospital.

He said a purchase committee acquired medicines for the hospital and was also the final authority for approval of recommendation of medicines to be included in the formulary.

Published In The Express Tribune, June 12th, 2012. 

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