Condition of public hospitals has worsened in Sindh, concedes minister

Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho has conceded that despite two tenures of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) governments in Sindh over the last 10 years, the condition of hospitals in the province has worsened and is not satisfactory due to a shortage of doctors and other staff, lack of equipment and a shortage of medicines.

She has however vowed to revamp the health facilities in the days to come. “Hospitals are facing a shortage of doctors and staff while many health facilities also lack basic equipment and machinery. We are going to recruit doctors and paramedical staff purely on merit while the required equipment and machinery would also be provided at health facilities to facilitate the masses,” she told a crowded news conference at her office on Wednesday. Pechuho is a medical doctor herself, who headed the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) for Polio Eradication in Sindh during last five years .She also has strong roots in the ruling party for being a sister of PPP leader and former president Asif Ali Zardari, while her husband Dr Fazlullah Pechuho had also served as health secretary until recently.

Facing media for the first time after assuming the portfolio of the provincial health department, Dr Azra Pechuho blamed the caretaker government for the unavailability of medicines at the health facilities, saying it did not issue a tender for the purchase of medicines.

She added that the Sindh cabinet in its first meeting relaxed the rules for the purchase of medicines for the first quarter so that the people could get medicines from the public hospitals.

“As far as the provision of substandard medicines is concerned, they were purchased owing to SPPRA rules, which call for accepting the lowest bid. But from now onwards, a central procurement committee has been formed and tasked with purchasing the best quality medicines from the market,” she said and added that tenders for the purchase of medicines had been issued and soon medicines would be acquired for the hospitals. She claimed that she was visiting hospitals and health facilities throughout the province for their need assessment, and vowed that as soon as she finished her task, the needs of these hospitals would be fulfilled.

Reiterating her policy of merit-based appointments in the health sector, she said medical superintendents, district health officers (DHOs) and program managers of vertical programs would be hired through a proficiency test, which would be conducted by the Dow University of Health Sciences . She added that only qualified and competent officials would be given responsibilities in the future. “Incompetent medical superintendents and other officials emerged as the main obstacle in the provision of quality health services in public health sector facilities and incompetent officials were also responsible for bringing in fake and substandard medicines in the health system.”

Commenting on the deaths of children in Tharparkar, the health minister attributed them to lack of family planning and the absence of birth spacing. She vowed that families in Tharparkar and other areas of Sindh would be persuaded to have space in pregnancies, which would result in better maternal and child health as well as in reduction in infant mortality in the province.

She said they had decided to stop the salaries of absent doctors, paramedics and health department officials through a biometric system, adding that by September 15, 2018, a list of absent employees of the health department would be displayed and those who remained absent from their duties until the end of the current month would not get their salaries.

Responding to a query regarding two deaths at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), she said both the patients were brought to the hospital in critical condition and doctors implanted the LVAD device to save their lives despite little chances but they could not survive. “Doctors take risks and perform surgeries even at five percent chance of survival because they have to do everything to save lives, but such things occur in any health system.” When asked about children who lost their both arms due to electrocution, she said they had been provided best available treatment and the government was in consultation with many rehabilitation centres in the world so that these children could be rehabilitated.