Benches and beds in some of the wards of the twin cities’ hospitals have become safe havens for bedbugs and cockroaches as the former feed on human blood and the latter find its shelter and feeding in drawers and washrooms which make troubles for patients and attendants as well.
Talking to APP, Muhammad Ikram, the relative of a patient at PIMS, complained about bedbugs and said they could not sit on the wooden benches placed beside patients’ beds in medical ward even for 15 minutes due to bedbugs. “When we sit on the benches, parasites present in the cracks and joints of the benches start biting us. The situation becomes unbearable for us due to fear that it may cause some serious health problems for us because many people sit on these benches on daily basis,” he said.
When contacted, a hospital staffer said the workers only sweep the floor, dustbins and change bed sheets, but do not listen to their complaints. Iqra Yusuf, a woman whose husband was a kidney patient in Polyclinic, also complained about bedbugs in benches and cockroaches in drawers and toilets and said they have become accustomed to the situation, but she feared that it may transmit some serious diseases from patients to healthy persons.
Shahid Mehmood, a diabetes patient in a private hospital ward, also told APP the same story, adding cats were also roaming freely in the ward in the night, but no one was paying attention to these issues. He said that washrooms were also speaking volumes about poor hygienic condition in the hospital even broken brushes and other sanitary material are lying in washrooms like storeroom. Bilal Tahir also pointed towards unchecked wastage of water in the hospital and said that majority of water taps in washrooms are out of order while the workers pay no head to this serious matter. “The release of water from faulty taps sometimes leads to shortage of water in the hospital, but the administration is not serious to solve this problem which is main contributor to loss of water,” he said.
Another patient in the surgical ward of PIMS said the manner of staff responsible for taking care of bed sheets and other necessary jobs was not polite. Some of the nurses in the hospital also told this scribe on the condition of anonymity that ward masters were not working actively, creating problems in the hospital. A doctor also confirmed that there were bedbugs and cockroaches even in their staffroom sofas.
