NAWABSHAH, Sept 30: At least 15 private laboratories are doing a roaring business just next to the People’s Medical College Hospital (PMCH) despite the hospital having one of the most-modern labs installed at a cost of Rs 15 million.

The PMCH lab has either facility to detect diseases such as HIV besides as well as Hepatitis, with a X-ray plant and CT scanning machine, which are almost lying idle courtesy the corrupt and inefficient doctors and the complacent staff.

These private labs include Rasheed lab, Nayab lab, Yasir lab, Khaskheli lab, Bhittai lab, Mehran lab, National lab, Hamza lab, Shaheen lab, Pak lab, New Life lab, Shah Lateef lab, and three others, which in one way or the other belong to doctors working at the PMC hospital.

The irony is that the majority of these laboratories are unregistered.

A survey carried out by this correspondent with a cross-section of society revealed that ward boys and nurses among other staff were being assigned jobs for fetching business for these laboratories on a commission basis.

The people of Nawabhsah are well aware of the fact that most of the doctors at the PMC hospital have their private labs viz-a-viz clinics outside the PMC hospital where “business” is almost impossible without the connivance of hospital staff.

On being contacted, one of the staff members of the PMC hospital told this correspondent that the foremost interest for the hospital staff was to make money which they did by fetching business for the private laboratories. He also claimed that the patients did not trust the results of the hospital lab as a result of which “we rarely conducted tests at the hospital laboratory”.

A patient from the medicine ward, however, said that two days back he was told by a doctor to get an X-ray and when he went to the radiology department he was told that the X-ray films were not available which was why he would have to get his X-ray done from outside.

A staff member of the hospital said that there were few X-rays films which were being kept for “an emergency as the country was in a state of war”.

The medicine ward staff supported a private laboratory just outside the hospital and fetched business for it as they got a commission of 25 per cent for each patient who went there. So far all ambulances with the exception of one were lying useless. Besides, all spare parts of the ambulances had already been sold by someone at the hospital.

A bus meant for nurses had been lying useless at the hospital premises since long.

Mostly poor patients who could not afford private hospitals went to the PMC hospital but were being tortured mentally.

The patients of the hospital have demanded an immediate end to all this and have requested that a detailed enquiry be carried out regarding all the wheeler-dealers as soon as possible.

NEW MS: But with the arrival of the new medical superintendent, Mr Ali Nawaz Khoso, people have started feeling the change. As a first step, towards improvement, the parking lot of the Hospital has been set up and the whole hospital was being given a facelift, and according to the MS, the scenario would get changed and improved with every passing day.