Top-level board to conduct forensic audit of JPMC, affiliated teaching institutions, says governor

Sindh Governor Imran Ismail has said that a top-level board comprising experts of the relevant fields will be constituted to do forensic and internal audit of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) and its affiliated teaching institutions in Karachi once their control is given back to the federal government as per a recent judgment of the Supreme Court.

He stated this on Friday while talking to newsmen during his visit to the JPMC. Ismail said that the intended forensic and internal audit of the JPMC would be helpful in identifying elements who had been getting privileges from the hospital on an undue basis.

He said that all the dutiful, honest and hardworking doctors, nursing and paramedical staff and other administrative officials of the hospital would be facilitated to the maximum possible extent once the JPMC came back to the control of the federal government. The governor said that it was the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan that the state was under a solemn obligation to provide complete facilities of health to each of its ailing citizen.

He told the newsmen that the basic purpose of his visit was to get a briefing on the health treatment facilities of the JPMC and to establish a shelter home for the attendants of the patients being admitted to the hospital.

Imail said that earlier a similar shelter home had been constituted at the Civil Hospital Karachi. He said that the shelter home to be established at the JPMC would house the needy attendants of patients who would be referred by the hospital’s administration for the purpose to facilitate them till the time their near and dear ones are under treatment at the hospital.

To a question regarding the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in Karachi whose control is also given back to the federal government, the governor claimed that the budgetary deficit of the NICVD was around Rs10 billion, which had been affecting payments by the hospital on several counts, including the procurement of medicines and salaries to doctors.

Earlier, JPMC Executive Director Dr Seemin Jamali informed the governor that a command and control centre was working at the hospital, which did electronic security surveillance of the hospital’s premises through a network of 125 closed-circuit television cameras.

She briefed the governor that the JMPC was a 2,000-bed hospital, which had been treating hundreds of patients on a daily basis from all over the country. The annual budget of the JPMC is Rs3.5 billion while the hospital annually provides emergency treatment to around 500,000 patients on an annual basis.

She said that all kinds of treatment to patients related to the general, surgical, and radiology departments were provided free of charge. The hospital had also been treating 125 cases of dog-bites on a daily basis, she added.

The hospital also houses a food complex being run by the Patient Aid Foundation to provide free of charge food service to the attendants of the patients. It has also procured six modern ambulances to shift patients from one ward to another within the JMPC. Dr Jamali said that hospital had also been providing cancer treatment, cyber knife, PET scan, mammography, and MRI all treatment-related facilities free of charge to patients.