Healthcare: No free medicines at Sialkot hospitals

Sialkot DHQ hospital and THQ hospitals in Daska, Sambrial and Pasrur have not received zakat funds for three years.

SIALKOT: Sialkot district headquarters (DHQ) hospital and the tehsil headquarters (THQ) hospitals in Daska, Sambrial and Pasrur have not received zakat funds for three years.

These funds are used to provide free of charge medicines to the poor and needy patients.

Patients and their attendants complained that most medicines prescribed to them were not available at the hospital and that they had to purchase it from the market.

Some welfare societies in the areas have now started providing limited amount of medicines to the deserving patients. President Sialkot District Patients Welfare Association Zafar Malik, however, said that welfare societies were doing their bit but unless the government released zakat funds the issue could not be resolved.  Officials in the Sialkot Health Department, seeking anonymity, said that the provincial Health Department had not yet provided them with their allocated quota of medicines. This, they said, was the reason behind the shortage of medicines at the hospitals. They complained that the provincial department had cut the funds earmarked for provision of free of charge medicines at public hospitals by half.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2010.