Owing to the sheer negligence of the health managers, about 40 percent basic health units (BHUs) in country are operating without maternity services, including labour rooms and delivery kits, which are essential for newborns and their mothers.
In compliance with the recommendations of the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, maternity services, including labour rooms and delivery kits, must be available at BHUs to facilitate rural women in their areas. However, an official here told Pakistan Today that around 40 percent of BHUs lacked these essential services while the condition of the BHUs having these services was also deplorable.
A lady health worker, on the condition of anonymity, said the BHUs in suburban areas of Islamabad were also in a deplorable condition as they had no facility of water or alternative arrangement in case of electricity breakdown. She said most of delivery cases were attended by lady health visitors (LHVs) in BHUs in Bhara Kahu, Shahdara, Chatter, Satrameel and Banigala suburban areas of Islamabad. She added labour rooms and delivery kits were not well-equipped and were used again and again without being sterilized.
“The doctors are only available till 12 noon after which they check patients at their residences and charge high fees,” she lamented. It is important to mention here that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani recently inaugurated a rural health care centre worth Rs 10 million in Bhara Kahu to provide better health care facilities to the poor. This scribe, during her visit to some BHUs in the suburban areas of the capital, found that the health care centre in Bhara Kahu, being recently inaugurated by the prime minister, was found comparatively in a better condition.
It was observed that essential facilities, equipment and services like washrooms, clean drinking water, oxygen tents, sterilizers, stretchers and wheelchairs etc were not available at many BHUs. A staff member of BHU in Shahdara told this scribe that there was no arrangement here for free medicines for poor patients as they did not get enough quantity of medicines from the ministry. She alleged most of the medicines were sold by the higher officials of the BHU.
She said as there was no arrangement of an oxygen kit in their health unit, serious patients were referred to PIMS or Polyclinic, two major state-run hospitals in the capital. The official said more than 25 percent BHUs all over the country lacked delivery kits, but this percentage was much higher in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
