Aftermath: KTH scrambles to deal with blast victims

Hospital’s spokesperson complains onlookers come in the way.

PESHAWAR:

The Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) witnessed chaotic scenes on Monday following a suicide attack on Arbab Road which claimed eight lives and injured scores of people.

“Eight dead and several injured were brought to the KTH, while three people who sustained head injuries were later referred to the Hayatabad Medical Complex and one was shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital,” confirmed KTH Chief Executive Dr Umer Ayub.

This was one of the major incidents the hospital has had to deal with, and its officials were clearly baffled by the influx of people.

A mass emergency was declared at KTH and due to a limited number of beds in the accident and emergency unit, the administration had to shift all the patients admitted to the orthopaedic ward to make room for the incoming injured ones. The bodies were kept in a separate ward because of lack of space in the hospital’s morgue.



Announcements made via loudspeakers also requested people to donate blood at the hospital’s bank. A huge number of onlookers and family members of victims crowded the emergency unit, with police and staffers having to request them to move and make way for the injured.

“We and the police are trying to get these bystanders out of the way as their presence is disrupting our work. It is very sad that instead of helping us, these people are just standing in the casualty ward looking at the injured,” complained KTH spokesperson Farhad Khan.

Meanwhile, aggrieved relatives thronged to the emergency unit in search of their loved ones. Mirwais, who lost two cousins Qari Hilal and Muhammad Idrees in the blast, was inconsolable after he saw their bodies. His loud cries and screams could be heard across the emergency unit.

One of the injured victims, Masood, narrated his account, “I was going to college in the bus when a blast rocked the vehicle. I heard women and children screaming and crying. I crawled out and found a vehicle to take me to the hospital.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2013.