IDPs woes: Few doctors willing to volunteer for relief work

Campaign to find health workers for Bannu camp gets cold response.


Sehrish Wasif July 11, 2014

ISLAMABAD:


The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) effort to sign on doctors and paramedics, and collect medicines for internally displaced persons (IDP) has elicited a cold response from medical practitioners and pharmaceutical companies.


The Pims administration set up a command and control centre ten days back to address poor health conditions and a massive shortage of health professionals for IDPs in Bannu.

Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University Vice Chancellor Prof Javed Akram said they set up the centre to register volunteer doctors, nurses and paramedics both from private and public hospitals to work in Bannu.

“Sadly, the centre has not received enough volunteers willing to serve in Bannu,” he said.

Dr Akram said there was no pre-existing healthcare infrastructure for IDPs in Bannu.

“The number of IDPs has crossed 800,000 and there are only 17 doctors available at Bannu District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital,” he said.

Pims has dispatched a 62-member team comprising gynaecologists, paediatricians, general physicians, surgeons, nurses, paramedics and ancillary staff to Bannu.

Pims has also approached Polyclinic and the National Institute of Rehabilitative Medicine (NIRM) to register staffers willing to work in Bannu.

“So far, 12 nurses from Polyclinic have signed up. It is a positive sign but it doesn’t fulfil the need,” said Akram, adding that the Pims team in Bannu has carried out 39 deliveries including c-sections so far.

“There is a huge shortage of medicine at Bannu DHQ, but so far, very few pharmaceutical companies have joined hands with Pims to help alleviate the crisis.”

“We fear that the poor response will lead to the closure of our centre and the health facilities we are providing in Bannu,” he said.

Pims’s coordinator Dr Asfandyar Khan, who is working at the Pims camp in Bannu DHQ, told The Express Tribune that DHQ hospital is overburdened and short of medicine.

He said a large number of displaced women are facing various kinds of gynaecological issues but there is only one gynaecologist at DHQ to deal with them.

“One of the major challenges is that women are often unwilling to be checked by [qualified] male doctors,” said Khan. Pims has sent five gynaecologists to Bannu, but even nurses are being forced to deal with gynaecological cases to lessen the burden.

He added that the IDP camp is at a great distance from DHQ and there is a need for a more reliable method of transporting patients to and from the camp.

Khan said most of the displaced women are severely anaemic, malnourished and have complications during delivery.

Moreover, there is an outbreak of gastroenteritis among children and many are suffering from skin disease, scabies, chest infections and heat-stroke, while “a few” measles cases have also been detected.

The Pims coordinator said they treated 1,200 patients and carried out five major surgeries during the last five days.

“We are trying to move our [two] mobile hospitals closer to the IDP camp so that the displaced population have quicker access to healthcare services,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11th, 2014.

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