Situated in old city, one of the most troubled areas in the metropolis, Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) is functioning under threats, it has been learnt reliably.
Being the province’s highly dependable healthcare facility, thousands of patients visit out patient department (OPD) of the civil hospital but at present there is no proper security notwithstanding the hospital staff having been facing threats from some unknown persons. There have been reports of attacks on doctors and paramedics by armed men whenever any person having political affiliation died during treatment at the healthcare facility.
The provincial government arranged security for the CHK whenever the administration of the health centre approached law enforcers after attack. Every time the law enforcers called back the security after few days and deployed them to other troubled areas. The deployment was made again when the hospital administration approached government amid threats.
On August 24, a mob attacked a senior doctor and other paramedics while they were performing their duties there. Associate Professor Surgery Dr Umair-ul-Islam and operation theatre (OT) technician Akram were busy in saving life of injured patient when the angry mob attacked them on their alleged failure of saving the life of the patient.
In reaction, the doctors and paramedics went on strike and postponed over 100 surgeries and refused hundreds of OPD patients for check-up. This practice in on since many years and both the hospital management and the provincial government are not interested in resolving this issue. Although, CHK has arranged private security but it could not avert such attacks due to lack of resources and limited number of security personnel.
Talking to Pakistan Today, CHK Medical Superintendent (MS) Dr Saeed Qureshi said the hospital was facing security issues. He said doctors and paramedics working in the healthcare facility complained highhandedness by the patients time to time and the management forwarded their complaints to the provincial government and requested them to arrange proper security. “As you know the metropolis is suffering from problem of targeted killing of political and religious people and whenever any political or religious activist suffering from gun shot injuries come to the hospital for treatment, their associates attacked the doctors and paramedics to express their anger over the incident,” the MS added.
“The main reason behind such incidents is geographical existence of the hospital. CHK is situated in old city area which is said to be one of the most sensitive areas in context of targeted and sectarian killings. The doctors and paramedics always faced security threats whenever patients with gunshot injuries arrived at the hospital for treatment. This time we have requested the provincial government for arrangement of security for doctors and paramedics to avoid such incidents again in the hospital. Besides, we have also decided to strengthen our private security to provide sense of security to our staffers,” he added.
