“As many as 30 major surgeries get delayed at the hospital daily because of load shedding,” says YDA Secretary Information Dr Khurrum . PHOTO: FILE
LAHORE:
The Young Doctors’ Association (YDA) on Monday gave the caretaker government a 72-hour deadline to comply with the Lahore High Court’s orders to make hospitals load shedding-free. Otherwise it would start a protest campaign.
The efficacy of the measles vaccine stored in Jinnah Hospital’s cold chain was suspect due to the long hours of load shedding, office bearers of the YDA said at a general council meeting.
The vaccine changed colour when it became ineffective, said a YDA member, the stock of vaccine in the cold chain had not entirely changed colour, however its efficacy had likely been affected. “This is because of protracted load shedding at the hospital,” he said.
“As many as 30 major surgeries get delayed at the hospital daily because of load shedding,” YDA Secretary Information Dr Khurrum Shehzad said, “Delaying major surgeries could lead to lifelong disability in the patients. We cannot operate on them without electricity.”
YDA President Dr Javaid Aheer said, “We cannot have patients dying while we stand helpless because of load shedding. We have had several patients on ventilators lose breath while their relatives try desperately to maintain their breathing in some way.”
He said the YDA feared that the hospital’s arrangements for maintaining the cold chain during long bouts of load shedding might not be enough. The vaccine might no longer remain effective, he said.
“11 children died of measles in the city on Monday, taking the number of deaths to 120,” he said, “This is a failure on the government’s part. We told the government to initiate a vaccination campaign against measles when an outbreak occurred in Sindh. No one paid heed then. Today we are losing our children to a preventable disease.”
Shabbir Chaudhry, a senior member of the YDA General Council, said the measles outbreak was a bigger problem than the dengue fever. “We congratulate Shahbaz Sharif for being nominated chief minister and demand that he declare an emergency to tackle measles.” He said that high dependency units (HDUs) should be set up at all public hospitals and the vaccine procured for the entire province. “Immunisation has only been carried out in Lahore. That is too little too late,” he said.
Expanded Programme on Immunisation Director Tanveer, talking to The Express Tribune, rejected the YDA’s claims regarding diminished efficacy of the vaccine. “We have backup generators for all cold rooms where the vaccine is stored in all hospitals. The mechanism keeps the vaccine safe for up to 18 hours. The criteria we use to determine the efficacy of vaccine is used and accepted all over the world. Thus there must be no doubt regarding the efficacy of the vaccine,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2013.
COMMENTS (8)
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If PM's secretariat,president's house,chief ministers' and governors' houses and federal lodges are exempted from load shedding then why not the hospitals because the hospitals deserve load-shedding free lines more than the leaders' fortified palaces because hospitals are made mostly for poor and common patients treatments and for the elite and privileged class people and leaders private and foreign hospitals are the most favorite and preferable.......
@ Maria, I dont know what addition u r talking about, but according to official papers of govt. The installed capacity of pakistan is 23k mv and I hope u know the peak demand of pak.
@ Maria .. You wont find those demands childish if you or some of your loved ones is on a ventilator and electricity goes out. As mentioned in the article there is a court directive that hospitals should be load shedding free. We should differentiate between electricity for life and electricity for comfort. Matters of life and death are not childish
@ Maria, Instead of telling YDA, why dont we tell the patients of govt. hospital i-e the poor people, that we dont have enough electricity to store vaccines yet we sleep at our homes running on stanby generators, and this measle doesnt effect the rich kids its just an other disease esoecially gifted for the poor ones, so we dont need to take any tention
Hospitals and Defence Agencies/installations should be provided with electricity 24/7. I do not care who is in the government. They need to give electricity to the public hospitals. Otherwise the blood of the patients will be on your hands(yes! YOU!!)
The first time Young Doctors' Association is rightful,accurate and true on its stance to exempt the hospitals from load shedding.....
YDA should come to politics formally and officially as they can only do this job. As we have seen their attitude towards the patients in the past. YDA Please
How childish. The new government has yet to assume control and these but threaten the caretaker government? Young Hooligans are trying to stir trouble. Everyone in Pakistan is responsible for the energy crisis and most educated people realise that it will take some time to remedy the energy shortfall. No energy was added to the national grid during 10 years of Musharraf dictatorship and a small amount was created in 5 years of PPP rule. We all know that hospitals should have uninterrupted supplies of electricity but load shedding will not disappear because of silly protests like this. Give the new government a chance to implement their proposals first!