Lahore – The emergency entrance of the Services Hospital has not yet been broadened despite Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaaz Sharif’s approval. Many critical patients continue to suffer and often die in the ambulances, owing to the choked service lane.
Almost a year has passed that the CM granted the amendment of the slip lane adjacent to Services Hospital, but the city administration has failed to implement CM’s orders. Patients continue to face difficulty in receiving first aid on time as there is no quick access to the Services Hospital’s Emergency.
Ambulances bringing-in patients to the hospital face various hurdles as the service lane adjacent to the hospital is choked up due to over usage. The hospital’s service lane is clogged not only at rush hours but also at usual hours. The service lane remains crowded the entire day because the lane is too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic and pedestrians.
The hospital’s management had wrote to the CM, briefing him on the problem, and the CM, replying on January 27 last year, constituted a committee to take rapid action against the prevailing situation. Multiple meetings were conducted between the hospital’s management, including the Principal Chief Executive Dr Fasial Masood and a senior surgeon Dr Sadaqat Ali Khan, and different city management departments.
It was concluded in all the meetings that the hospital’s service lane shall be broadened immediately, but no action has been taken as yet.
The hospital’s management had been giving multiple briefings to the special task force formed by the CM and various other city administration departments, and had frequent meetings with Chief Minister Task Force on LRRP Chairman Khwaja Hassan, former DCO Sajjad Bhutta, TEPA Engineering Construction Director Khalid Alvi and the Lahore Commissioner Khusro Pervaiz, who had promised to get this work done as soon as possible. The summary of the problems presented by the hospital’s managements had suggested that a footpath for pedestrians should be made with a permanent batch of traffic officials deployed at the service lane to control the inflow of traffic. Khwaja Hassan and Khusro Pervaiz were not available to comment on the issue.
