LARKANA: The largest teaching hospital of upper Sindh, Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), is facing a severe shortage of medicines since last five months, forcing needy patients to buy prescribed medicines from the open market.
The CMCH has over 1,500 beds and more than 40 different departments including surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, urology, nephrology, eye, cardiac, ENT and paediatrics, and is spread over three locations in the city. Over 2,500 patients arrive daily at Out-Patients Department (OPD) from more than 12 districts to get specialised medical treatment to get rid of various ailments.
According to sources, after centralisation of procurement process during the tenure of chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, this issue has been surfacing every year. The annual budget is approved in June annually, but even till November, the required tender process could not be finalised by the health department which shows their sheer negligence due to which poor patients suffer, they said.
The government healthcare system for the patients has become useless in Sindh.
CMCH’s quarterly budget for procurement of medicines is Rs120 million, sources further said and added that some hospitals, including JPMC and Karachi Civil Hospital and Hyderabad LUMS, have been allowed by the health secretary to procure drugs on last year’s rate contract basis. They said that CMCH is being denied this facility even after repeated requests to overcome the shortage of not only medicines but also of POL for generators and ambulances, oxygen gas, stationary and so many other essential items of daily use.
According to further details, there are no OPD slips and various pathological test reports are being written on plain papers by the concerned doctors since long, which are not relied upon by the practitioners. Sources further disclosed that there are even no kits for testing hepatitis and HIV/AIDS and over 100 operations are carried out daily.
Dr Syed Mahboob Ali Shah told reporters that he recently called on the health secretary who assured that medicine supply will resume within a week. He added that available drugs were being supplied to the indoor patients.