Three major public hospitals of Karachi – Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) – are facing acute shortage of female medico legal officers (MLOs), so the women patients and the injured have to wait several hours to get themselves examined by the female attendants, it was learnt on Friday.
A senior MLO at JPMC said on anonymity that there was acute shortage of female MLOs in Karachi’s three major public sector hospitals which had put heavy burden on male MLOs.
He said only two female MLOs were available in Jinnah Hospital and Civil Hospital Karachi, out of four seats allocated for each major hospital in three shifts, while only one lady MLO was available in Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
He said: “The MLOs’s report provides the cause of death, time of death, nature of death, and other details on an official form at the time of autopsy which becomes the base to fight court’s case”. He said the MLOs could provide direction in handling terrorism, rape and other cases.
It is unfortunate that these important vacancies could not be filled in these major hospitals, while the departments in six hospitals were also non-functional due to this lethargy. He said three major hospitals of city had the facility of MLOs like ASH, JPMC and CHK, while medico-legal department in six other hospitals – Lyari GeneralHospital, Sindh Government Hospital New Karachi, Sindh Government Hospital Liaquatabad, Sindh Government Hospital Saudabad, SindhGovernmentHospitalQatarOrangiTown and Sindh Government Hospital Karachi Korangi – are non-functional due to MLOs’ shortage.
He said female MLOs’ shortage had increased the burden of work on male MLOs in major public hospitals, while in case of any emergency, existing male and female MLOs had to work extra hours.
He said there was urgent need of female MLOs to handle the emergency cases and to minimise the extra burden on male MLOs in those major hospitals.
According to a health department report, around 3,500 postmortems are carried out in the city every year, while 30,000 affectees are issued medico-legal certificates in different cases during this period. These certificates later become beneficial for victims to seek justice through courts. Senior MLO at CHK Dr Nisar Ali Shah, when contacted, said that few seats of female MLOs were lying vacant in the city’s major public hospitals.
