By BILAL KANJAAL
ISLAMABAD: The shortage of physicians at the Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) Islamabad Capital Hospital (ICH) and dispensaries is causing disappointment among the patients.
In a visit to the hospital and different CDA dispensaries, Pakistan Today observed a shortage of doctors and dispensers. The available documents also reveal the shortage of Medical Officers (MO) at the dispensaries, which shows apathy and inability of the agency.
According to the sources, the capital hospital needs 80 doctors to run the functions properly and facilitate the patients. However, only 40 doctors are working with the hospital currently. Similarly, there are only 6 doctors instead of 14 who are working with CDA’s dispensaries.
These reasons are forcing the patients towards the private hospitals because there are inadequate health facilities, conditions of dispensaries are unhygienic and there is a shortage of doctors. The poor have to pay heavy sums for their lab tests as the government-run facilities are not capable enough to cater the masses.
According to a dispenser, doctors were arranged from Punjab but were eventually deported back which caused serious problems to the dispensaries in accommodating patients.
A dispensary official told Pakistan Today that the shortage of doctors has caused serious problems with the timetables of active doctors, as they have to move around – within the capital – to attend patients at various dispensaries of the city.
Arshad Iqbal – a patient at ICH – said that the doctors were giving prescriptions over the phone to the dispensers. Though a dispenser checks the symptoms of the disease on behalf of the doctor, the presence of the doctors is essential to prescribe any drugs, he said.
According to the directorate officials, it is because of the flaws in the recruitment policy of the government that the posts are still lying vacant during the whole tenure of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N).
The responsibility should be given to the concerned departments directly and those departments should be allowed to choose the staff through advised testing services. It takes months for a testing service to set a time for the recruitment process as they are mostly busy recruiting for other departments or sectors.
For the scrutiny of the applicants, education certificates are not required in the current policy, which creates hindrances as every candidate can appear in the test, whether eligible or not, he added. Previously, the testing services reported that the system has flaws as many of the applicants, on being accepted, have no experience to match the criteria required for recruitment for the post.
Talking to Pakistan Today, CDA Spokesperson Mazhar Hussain denied any shortage of the medical staff in the hospital and dispensaries.
“In case of any shortages, we do have a process to advertise the positions, through various sources of communications, to fill the vacant posts,” he said.