- Mysterious infant deaths in Sahiwal hospital
The criminal shortcomings in the public health sector, both in modern equipment and quality of human element, are apparent when reports of hundreds of infants dying of malnutrition and disease in dilapidated Thar hospitals emerge regularly, or more recently, when large number of HIV patients (regarded as tip of the iceberg), mostly children and infants, were discovered amid the shambles of Sindh health department. Meanwhile we also have refusals to vaccinate children against polio, rising by 85pc in KP, leading to 11 polio cases in Bannu division alone. Prohibitive cost of private clinics drives the vast majority to vagaries of chaotic, callous government hospitals, where doctor’s negligence and apathy reign supreme, the nursing staff is oblivious of basic hygiene and not exactly Florence Nightingales, and so some of the unlucky deprived segment are actually walking into the jaws of death. Rapacious and mendacious physicians have apparently traded their Hippocratic Oath for the Hypocrite Oath of minting money and acting more like ruthless bank directors.
The death of reportedly eight infants within 24 hours in Sahiwal’s DHQ Teaching Hospital on Saturday, as in all similar cases of human casualties compounded by a mouth-watering promise of media sensationalism attached, has been turned into an unfathomable mystery, which now seemingly only those moralistic ‘watchdogs of the bourgeoisie’, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson could solve definitely with their deductions and iron logic. The protesting parents of three infants who died on Saturday blamed the failure of the paediatric unit’s air conditioning system, which considering the shrieking summer weather these days, cannot be entirely discarded, even if the outage was for two hours only. The Sahiwal DCO initially held a bio-metric engineer responsible and recommended his suspension. The hospital authorities maintained that only one of 11 air conditioners malfunctioned and the infant deaths (3, not 8, as reported by electronic media), were caused by known medical diseases. The Punjab CM has ‘taken notice’ and a two-man inquiry committee will submit its reports within 24 hours. Playing politics on the Sahiwal incident, or the familiar cover-up, will only result in more such happenings in future, and would be a betrayal of those tragic ‘florets crushed in the bud’ who so soon ‘exchanged the imprisoning womb, for darker closets of the tomb’.