Twelve-year-old Attaullah Birhoi was crushed under the wheels of a van in Jamshoro on Wednesday. His father, Noorullah Birhoi, struggled to save his son’s life in the face of a jurisdiction issue: Noorullah headed to Karachi in the hope that his son will be treated in the provincial capital but all major state-run hospitals of the city refused treatment to Attaullah on the grounds that the case wasn’t theirs.
Noorullah, an auto mechanic by profession and a resident of Jamshoro Phatak, told Pakistan Today that Attaullah was playing on the roadside when a van crushed him. “The lower parts of his abdomen were severely bruised and he was bleeding. We took him to Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) Hospital in Jamshoro immediately after the accident,” he narrated.
“Doctors at LUMHS, after a short examination, told us that they are unable to treat the boy and suggested that we take him to Karachi. We put Attaullah in an ambulance with a few pints of blood, and rushed to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).
“But when we arrived at the JPMC, we thought that now we are at proper place, but within a few minutes, doctors at JPMC told us that since the patient is only 12-years-old, so need to take him to the National Institute of Child Health (NICH),” Birhoi narrated.
But doctors at the NICH, while acknowledging the case, declared within no time that the accident had ruptured a few of Attaullah’s important muscles and that he needed to be taken immediately to the Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK).
The father hired an ambulance again, kept a bag of blood, and rushed to CHK. He was given a similar story at CHK, told him they can’t operate on Attaullah, and asked the hapless father to head back to the NICH.
“Usually when the police find a dead body or any accident, in which they don’t find any monetary benefit, they ignore the case on the grounds that it was not in their jurisdiction. But I am surprised that even people who we consider as messiahs are doing the same thing,” a teary-eyed Birhoi told Pakistan Today.
Meantime, some young men who knew Birhoi came to his aid and helped him take the child to the NICH. The young men warned doctors that if they do not treat the child, they will protest and call the media. This threat seemed to work, and doctors started doing their jobs.
When Pakistan Today contacted NICH Director Professor Dr Jamal Raza, he admitted that his hospital denied admitting Attaullah because it was not their case. “I don’t know what is wrong with the media, it takes every case so seriously. This was not our case to begin with,” he said. But when asked why was the child admitted again if it was not the NICH’s case, Raza disconnected the call with the remark “I am not liable to issue any statement.”
