News
Health policy for Balochistan?
By SafiUllah Shahwani
QUETTA: Whereas the Provincial Health Minister Rehmat Saleh Baloch talks of a health policy for the province in his speeches at five-star hotels in an air-conditioned room, the facilities of health still remain a dream for common residents in Balochistan.
During a recent to the Civil Hospital Quetta, I witnessed pathetic conditions of the Hospital’s emergency centre. As the corridor opened, a strong stench greeted me and overwhelmed my senses. Inside, doctors, well aware of principles of hygiene, were encircled by a crowd of people. It seemed that these people had been displaced by a war and had gathered at a makeshift camp to survive.
Few steps ahead, beds were lined up on the left side with patients lying on them, resigned, encircled by as many attendants as could possibly have find time and opportunity to accompany the poor patients. Drawing further into the corridor I came to the Operation Theatre (OT) where broken heads, fractured limbs and bleeding muscles were being treated. Patients seemed surrounded by trainees who kept on asking their attendants, every now and then, to fetch medicines from medical shops located in front of the Civil Hospital Quetta, as funds have never been allocated for the purchase of medicines for decades.
White tiles of the OT were blackened at some places, yellowish or reddish at other places – perhaps bearing the brunt of some strikes of sweepers or cruelty of some robber-cum-doctor-cum-administrators?—(so-called). Foams of the some beds were peeping outside the sheets to show their sympathy with patients. The corridor also had an X-ray room which was occupied by two officials responsible for making X-rays. One of them was perhaps in ecstasy of being the owner of the hospital. He yelled wildly at the patients who were mostly aged, children, and indigent sections.
At one instance, he rudely rebuked a patients’ attendant, “Why don’t you people demolish this hospital and emancipate us?” I wondered if he was asking emancipation for himself from patients or for patients from himself and from his other accomplices—yes accomplices who were quite apt at thievery of many sort. Coordination is an essential component of service delivery but it seemed nowhere existent. Ethical values, civility, and good behaviour were totally words of a different planet for the species of Hospital.
Yelling, shouting, and insulting were, it seemed, part of their capacity building trainings—if there were any. Communication skills, load management, service delivery, maintenance of hygienic conditions within premises of the hospital were irrelevant objects. The corridor of the emergency ward literally presented a look of flocks of animals running, wandering, bleeding, shouting and crying in a state of confusion after being battered by some catastrophe. Few emergency patients arrived, bleeding but no stretchers were available to carry them to the OT. Two attendants of patients entered into a brawl for winning a stretcher for their patients, luckily found at some corner. This all reminded of how proudly health policies are talked of with least regard for ground realities.
Bravo Mr. Health Minister, the health policy is indeed unmatchable you talk of! Bravo Mr. Chief Minister your special focus has indeed improved the health sector to unimaginable degrees! Bravo our sincere doctors, you are all sincere with your Hippocrates oath to the core! My honoured rulers, doctors, paramedics—looters and all—your commitment to this soil, to the people of this deprived province—deprived, plundered and looted by colonist forces only? Your commitment to this soil is so high that perhaps a conspiracy of Punjab can only deter you to serve your—yes your own—people.Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk