LAHORE: Due to the incompetence and antipathy of the government, woes of the hospitals are continuously increasing and due to the negligence of the health department, children are being born sometimes inside the hospital and sometimes in the hospital’s cafeteria. The continuous increase in the population of the country is creating new problems.
Pregnant women are delivering babies sometimes due to lack of right treatment or because of the negligence of the doctors. At certain places, multiple patients await treatment on a single bed and there’s no one to question the insensitivity of the doctors.
Currently, for the total population of 200 million in the country, there are 1,167 hospitals, 5,695 dispensaries, 5,464 Basic Health Units (BHU) and sub-health centres and 733 maternity and child health centres in which the total capacity to accommodate patients is only 118,869 beds.
Furthermore, there is not even a single hospital and dispensary out of these in which quality treatment facilities are available.
On the other hand, at the BHUs, dispensers act as doctors and government appointed doctors work at their private clinics. Even at the renowned hospitals, sometimes the sweepers are prescribing medicine to the people.
Therefore, it will not be wrong to say that the doctors in our country, instead of considering it a duty, consider treating people as an act of favour. These days it has become a bigger problem even to get an appointment with the doctors, let alone discuss medical problems with them.
If there’s an emergency at night, due to which a patient might have to go to a hospital, the doctors do not allow anyone to stand beside them. Even the medical attendants at the entrance of the ward do not listen to anyone unless they’re bribed.
Even during the unfortunate incidents of deaths, those who take the body to the ambulance ask for money. Other than that, the housekeeping and maintenance staff asks for monetary compensation, getting the patients served by the staff requires payment, to move a patient from one place to another on a wheelchair requires money and upon discharge, the whole of the staff asks to be fed again.
And if such payments are not made, the patient and the heirs face unimaginable problems. Thus they resort to making such payments to avoid any inconveniences they might face at getting their loved ones treated. If a child is born, considering that it a happy occasion for the family, the hospital staff considers it a right to ask for money from the family in such an event.
From a hospital’s medical superintendent (MS) to secretary to ministers, everyone is aware of these practices but nobody shows the courage to reform the system because all the hospital guards, cleaners, ward boys, lab attendants, technicians, nurses, doctors, MS, secretary and ministers, all of them are appointed on the basis of nepotism, violating merit.
If we talk about department’s budget, billions are collected in form of commissions and medicines for the department.
Currently, in the whole of the country, there is not even a single hospital which provides proper medical facilities and healthcare for the poor, at an affordable price.
In Lahore, if we talk about female pregnancy, there are 5.3 million women and the total capacity of the gynaecology departments of government hospitals is only of 1,000 beds. In such hospitals, one bed is witnessed to be occupied by three pregnant females, which is very embarrassing. In this regard, the health department has failed to implement Specialised Healthcare Referral System.
All the services that we avail today were provided to us by those who ruled Pakistan 70 years ago and the recent governments have not done anything to alleviate the problems of the masses.
