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| January 19, 2002 | Saturday | Ziqa'ad 4, 1422 |
DHQ hospital likely to be downgraded
RAWALPINDI, Jan 18: The District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital will be downgraded to a secondary health care centre and over 300 of its employees made redundant if district Nazim succeeds in his plan to acquire this hospital.
The governor, on the district government’s request, has sought health secretary’s comments about placing one of the three teaching hospitals in the city under the district government’s administrative control. Since, Holy Family Hospital and Rawalpindi General Hospital are huge tertiary care setups, the comparatively smaller unit, the DHQ Hospital, will be the likely choice in this context.
Not only that the DHQ Hospital will be downgraded, the Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC) is also feared to lose its recognition with Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC).
Consequently, the city will lose a medical college, darkening the future prospects of thousands of students intending to become doctors.
According to official quarters, the move will result in loss of almost 300 jobs of specialists, medical officers, paramedics and support staff. Moreover, professors, registrars, administrative staff, and house officers of the RMC, attending to patients at the hospital, will also have to go back to the college. The end loser, in any case, will be the poor patients.
Last year’s statistics of the hospital show that 3,60,000 patients received treatment at its outdoor facility, 71,520 were treated at the emergency section, and 15,000 were admitted. Similarly, over 200,000 diagnostic tests of various nature were performed at the hospital and 5,000 patients operated.
The hospital will no longer be able to handle such colossal numbers of patients, leaving them, yet again, at the mercy of the costly private health care outlets.
According to official estimates, the financial allocations for the hospital will also be reduced from Rs80 million to Rs35 million. This may adversely affect the health care quality at the hospital.
Another blow for the poor and deserving patients will come in form of withdrawal of Zakat funds provided to the teaching hospitals. Currently, the hospital gets Rs15 million from National Zakat Foundation in this regard.
Similarly, several dedicated medical units being run by the professors of the medical college will also be closed. These units include district’s only neurosurgery unit, tuberculosis chest unit and endoscopy unit.
Work on a burn unit, being donated by some philanthropists, was already underway. But, in the wake of new developments, the donors have conveyed their disapproval to go ahead with the project. Similarly, plans to acquire a CT Scan machine from philanthropists are also likely to go up in smoke.
The hospital is also the principal disaster management facility of the entire Rawalpindi division. However, it will loose this status after coming into district government’s control.
Besides having a 357-bed capacity, the DHQ Hospital has a 12-bed CCU, ITCU, and operation theatres, that have been upgraded in view of its status as a teaching facility.
The three hospitals of the city had been developed as interdependent facilities and shared some units. Withdrawing the affiliation of the DHQ Hospital will seriously affect this special arrangement.
Moreover, the hospital had been designed according to the needs of a teaching institution, and the change in its status would result in loss of billions of rupees of tax payers’ money spent on its construction.
District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiani once admitted that he never found the DHQ and other teaching hospitals wanting in any respect. He said, although, he never requested for transfer of a teaching hospital to the district government, he did point out the need for a hospital under the administrative control of the district government.
The reason, he said, was to facilitate the decision-making for running the hospital. However, this logic failed to convince many who believe that the hospital was already an autonomous body and placing it under district government’s control would further complicate the decision-making process.
Aghaz, a local welfare organization, has decided to approach the High Court against the move.
Meanwhile, Consumers Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP), in a statement issued on Friday, condemned the district government’s move, saying it would affect patients.
The local government, the statement said, could play its role in institutional buildup, but the responsibilities must be shared in a proportionate manner. The policies of the district government should be governed by the public interest, it added.
The move, the statement said, would seriously jeopardize the the career of the RMC students. The college produces 232 graduates annually, and detachment of DHQ hospital may also result in revocation of its affiliation with the PMDC.
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