KARACHI: The appointment of those with unrelated work experience and less qualified persons at top positions in the all four major departments of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto (SMBB) Trauma Centre, Sindh’s biggest emergency & trauma facility, is affecting the whole performance of the institution, it was learnt on Sunday.
This blatant violation of merit and lack of regard for a specialist cadre, in such an important institution of Sindh is casting an ugly shadow on the performance of this institution and holding it back to attain the glory and laurels, which it may earn provided it is run on merit.
Trauma and Orthopedic Department (TOD), which is the linchpin of the SMBB Trauma Centre, is being headed by Dr Amir Haleem, who is a general surgeon by qualification and does not hold any special qualification or degree in the field of trauma and orthopaedic surgery.
It is pertinent to mention here that TOD is being headed by Dr Amir despite the presence of an internationally qualified Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon in the department, who is the Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) from England in Trauma and Orthopedics.
It is also strange as well as sad to know that the second most important department of the SMBB, the Accident and Emergency Department, is being led by Dr Nosherwan Gul Soomro, who is simply an MBBS and does not hold any postgraduate qualification or any special qualification to head this major section.
This sorry state of affairs continues to the Vascular Surgery Department (VSD) as well as Radiology Department (RD). In VSD, a junior surgeon named Dr Fahad, who holds the postgraduate degree in the field of General Surgery and not in the Vascular Surgery, has been given the charge of the whole department.
In RD, again, a lesser qualified Dr Uroosa has been made the head of the department despite the presence of more qualified colleagues than her.
The feedback from some of the patients have also revealed that, although most of the patients were happy with the free treatment they received during their stay at the SMBB Trauma Centre but at the same time there were multiple patients who complained regarding the poor standards of surgery, especially the poor bony fixations which ultimately they had to get revised from private hospitals after paying heavy amounts of money to prevent future life-long disabilities of their limbs.
The SMBB Trauma Centre was inaugurated in December 2015 by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari along with then Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, was established costing billions of rupees fund of provincial and federal governments after the passage of ten years.
The 14-storey ‘state-of-the-art’ trauma centre is first of its kind established where a wide assortment of facilities has been put together to offer the one-window operation to the public in emergency situations.
SMBB Trauma Centre is one of the leading initiatives in the health sector by the PPP-led Sindh Government. It is actually the only major Trauma Centre of the Sindh province that deals with highly complex and major trauma and orthopaedic injuries.
The Trauma Centre caters not only the people of Karachi and rural areas of Sindh but patients from parts of the Baluchistan and Southern Punjab also treated here on a frequent basis.
Pakistan Today tried to contact Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) Vice-Chancellor Dr Saeed Qureshi to seek his comments however his cell phone remained unattended.