Healthcare woes: Major hospitals face shortage of lifesaving drugs

RAWALPINDI:

Major public sector hospitals in Rawalpindi are facing shortages of lifesaving drugs, sources said.

Patients and their attendants visiting the hospitals blamed the hospital administrations for the shortages.

They alleged that the hospitals’ drug stores issue only 40 per cent medicines to the patients and 60 per cent of the medicines were being sold in the market.

The hospitals’ blood-banks also lack fresh blood, the sources told Daily Express.

According to the sources, the Punjab chief minister has instructed the city’s government hospitals — Benazir Bhutto Hospital, District Headquarters Hospital and Holy Family Hospital — to provide free-of-cost medicines to patients at the emergency wards.

An official at the Benazir Bhutto Hospital, on condition of anonymity, said only low-priced medicines were being given to the patients by the hospitals, forcing them to purchase costly ones from the market.

He claimed that CT scan and MRI facilities at the hospital were available only for patients referred to by doctors as “private patients”.

There are 87 lifesaving drugs that the Punjab government had announced it would provide patients in emergencies.

In this regard, according to hospital sources, funds have already been released to all three hospitals.

The sources also claimed that treatment of patients from Zakat fund has been stopped due to unavailability of funds.

Holy Family Hospital MS Dr Arshad Sabir refuted the claim that the hospital was facing a shortage of medicines. He said free medicines were being provided to patients in emergencies, but conceded that sometimes patients had to purchase medicines from the market when the prescribed drugs were not available in the hospital.

He said that ventilators in the emergency department were also being repaired.

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