Cantonment hospitals: Care less, charge more

Doctors while prescribing test recommend lab as well; Cantonment authority says hospital in loss.

RAWALPINDI:

For the civilian population of Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonment boards, even a near decent healthcare has become a distant dream.

Those who cannot afford treatment at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) are left with no option but to go to the 500-bed Cantonment General Hospital.

But the unavailability of test facility at the hospital forces them to queue up outside private laboratories instead.

“Fee in the private clinics is too high for me,” said Shehzad Khan, a resident of Kamal Abad adding that the hospital’s X-ray machine often remains out of order.

“Some patients with head injuries need Computed Tomography (CT) Scan to ascertain the real nature of injury,” said a doctor at the hospital who wished not to be named.  The test is an expensive one beyond the reach of many.

Patients present at the hospital premises criticized the provincial government for its failure to provide healthcare. “It is a deplorable that we have to take our patients in stretchers out of the hospital for tests,” said Muhammad Ismail, a resident of Dheri Hassan Abad.

Patients claimed doctors do not accept tests from laboratories other than their favourite ones.

Raja Salim, 34, had to hire an ambulance to take his mother, a heart patient, to Islamabad for a test as, according to Salim, the doctor did not accept the test he already had “terming it as inaccurate, and recommended another laboratory in Islamabad.”

Unable to pay the high cost, most of attendants take their patients to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences where CT scan facility also remains out of order, causing the patients and their attendants to wait for hours.

The town’s only CT scan machine available in the Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) has been lying dysfunctional for the last several years, leaving thousands of patients to be fleeced by owners by the private labs. Laboratories charge Rs10, 000 for plain CT scan while Rs12, 000 for contrast CT scan as against the BBH charges which are Rs1, 600 and Rs2800 respectively.

Anwaar Muhammad, a resident of Westridge said the patients are charged Rs500 for the emergency treatment besides Rs25 for the outpatient receipt.

Cantonment Executive Officer Rana Manzoor Ali Khan said the installation of the facility will be completed soon as quotations have been approved. About the fee (Rs500), however, he said the hospital runs on charity and is in losses. “The cantonment is spending Rs6 million on medicines annually whereas it earns only Rs0.2 million,” he said adding that the fee charged is not that high.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2014.