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| October 22, 2001 | Monday | Shaba'an 4, 1422 |
Dist hospital doctors ‘fleecing’ patients
HANGU, Oct 21: The district hospital does not have all treatment facilities despite a huge population of the locals and Afghans.
The locals have complained that the hospital seems to have been built for the influential people of the area, as the poor cannot get any treatment due to what they call a headstrong approach of doctors.
They say the doctors are minting money instead of treating patients, particularly the poor ones.
Former ISO president Malik Alam Khan told NNI on Sunday that his mother had suffered a paralysis attack and he had to rush her to the hospital on Friday. He said he had reached the hospital at 7am, but had to wait for the doctor till 7.30am.
Khan was both shocked and surprised when the doctor told him that the hospital did not have any ECG machine. The doctor asked him to take his mother to his (the doctor’s) house, where the doctor had an ECG machine. Khan did so, but got disturbed when the doctor asked him to go to a nearby clinic for taking an X-ray, as his own X-ray machine was not working properly.
When Khan started arguing with the doctor and showed him his identity, the doctor asked the operator of the X-ray machine to do something. Later his mother was admitted to the hospital.
He said no doctor had come to attend to his mother from 8:30am till 5pm. He added that only a dispenser had come and injected his mother with a vaccine. Finally Khan got enraged and brought his mother home without any treatment.
Khan said all the doctors were minting money by denying patients treatment at the hospital, but providing the same at their official residences. He alleged that the doctors gave much time to a private hospital, Al-Madina, where they made considerable money, as they continued to refer the patients who visited the district hospital to the private hospital for treatment.
Another local, Malik Shehrar Khan, a student of BA, said a grade-20 doctor, Sher Khan, who was a good administrator, had been sidelined and a grade-19 doctor, Gul Rehman, had been appointed the official in charge of the hospital because he was very influential.—NNI