Hundreds of kids, mothers exposed to coronavirus

PESHAWAR: Despite repeated reminders by the government for taking precautionary measures against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), hundreds of children along with their mothers are exposed to the deadly virus at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) where two to three sick children are kept on one bed in the Paediatric Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s largest health facility.

Children with multiple health issues are brought from all over the province to the Paediatric Department of the LRH. There are three units in the department at the LRH which remain occupied throughout the year. Mostly, two to three patients are placed on one bed due to the heavy flow of patients from the provincial capital as well as other districts. “Let alone other problems, sometimes it becomes difficult for the doctors and nursing staff to walk properly during the ward round and carefully examine patients due to heavy rush of patients and their attendants,” said a doctor at the department. Pleading anonymity, he said doctors still ensure to reach every child in all the three units of the Paediatric Department.

“Sometimes we don’t want to put a child suffering from mild disease with another child on the same bed with infectious disease, but there is no other option. We even warn the parents of the consequences but they don’t take it seriously,” said the paediatrician. Last week two children reportedly died in the Bahrain tehsil of Swat district for unknown reasons but neither the Health Department nor local administration bothered to investigate the mysterious deaths. In Peshawar, paediatric units in all the three tertiary care hospitals – Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex – always remain overcrowded and often more than one patient is put on one bed due to inadequate paediatric services in the peripheries. Coronavirus has taken less than three months to travel around the world. After surfacing in late 2019 in China, the virus has spread to over 100 countries and claimed scores of lives. In Pakistan, with the two new positive cases in Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reached 18 on Tuesday.

The health experts, particularly paediatricians in KP, are concerned about sick children being accommodated with each other in beds in the public sector hospitals. Another paediatrician in the LRH told The News that they were worried about the children the way they were being treated. “Not only me, everybody is worried about the children and afraid that it could cause a pandemic in case a single patient tested positive in the over-occupied Paediatric Department of the LRH,” he opined. According to the paediatricians, several reminders have been sent to the hospital administration, but in vain. This correspondent obtained copies of several letters which the Paediatric Department had sent to the medical director to seek his attention towards this serious issue. The Board of Governors (BoG) of LRH on July 20, 2017 introduced one-bed one-patient policy and announced its implementation in letter and spirit in all departments of the hospital. The Medical Director LRH then immediately held a meeting with the faculty of the Paediatric Department to find out ways and means to ensure the implementation of the policy.

“It was decided that renovated space on the ground floor which was previously used by the paediatric surgery unit will be utilised as a paediatric emergency admission or assessment unit with qualified paediatrician. But one-bed one-patient policy could not be implemented in three years,” said an official of the hospital.