- Regular patients suffer ‘unavailability’ of beds as PIMS reserve an entire emergency ward for possible police crackdown patients from PTI, PAT sit-ins
- PIMS official says ward closed on federal government’s orders
An Emergency Ward of Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) has been closed for daily patients amidst an anticipated operation against the sit-ins of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT), Pakistan Today has observed.
A ward of 20 beds of Emergency Block in PIMS is kept vacant by the administration so as to accommodate the causalities caused by an expected police action against the sit in participants causing great problems for hundreds of the emergency patients in the largest health facility of the capital.
While patients brought to PIMS Emergency are kept in the reception hall without proper bedding and medical care and most of these patients are returned without admitting them in the emergency, a vacant 20-bed ward next to reception hall is making mockery of management principles of the PIMS administration.
A patient who was brought to PIMS Emergency after a roof of a building collapsed on Murree Road, Fiazabad was refused an admission due to lack of beds by the administration. Attendants of the Afzal Hussain who was critically injured protested against the administration and demanded the opening of the closed ward, Pakistan Today further observed.
Another patient who was seriously injured was also lying in the reception room after the first aid. The attendants of patients demanded his admission in the ward as the patient’s head was still bleeding even after the first aid given to him.
A doctor on duty admitted that the patients need further medical care due to bleeding but they are helpless because the Emergency Block does not have enough space to provide bedding for the patient.
Emergency Director Dr Zulfiqar Ghori was not available for his comment on the woes of emergency patients caused by the closure of 20-bed ward but his assistant Tahir Iqbal told Pakistan Today that closing of the ward is not the decision of PIMS administration but it has been ordered by the federal government.
“We cannot open the ward ourselves without orders from the federal government, though we are facing huge difficulty in accommodating the emergency patients and we also has face angry attendants of patients who do not realise our compulsion,” Tahir Iqbal further told.