KARACHI, Jan 19: People have been facing serious problem and a great deal of hardship in getting medico-legal opinion in emergency cases as there are only three, out of nine, major hospitals in public sector catering to the needs of Karachiites. The three hospitals also have meagre resources. Most of the people, who sustain serious injuries in an accident, clash, terrorist attack, etc., die on their way to hospitals before getting treatment as the hospitals in private sector usually do not entertain such cases.

The Civil Hospital, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Jinnah Post-graduate Medical Centre, Qatar Hospital (Orangi), Government Hospital Korangi, Lyari General Hospital, Sindh Government Hospital Liaquatabad, Government Hospital New Karachi and Government Hospital Saudabad have all medico-legal centres of their own.

However, emergency facilities are available at only three of them — Civil Hospital, JPMC and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. The people who suffer injuries in Malir or adjoining areas have to be taken to theJPMC. It takes no less than an hour to reach the hospital from the area.

Doctors are of the opinion that during serious injury to a patient, he is needed to be attended by a medical officer without wastage of time. The Saudabad Government Hospital is entitled to entertain the medico-legal cases, but the patients were usually taken to JPMC from Malir.

Similarly, a medico-legal departments exists in Government Hospital, Korangi, but all cases requiring a medico-legal examination, are referred to the JPMC.

Sources in the hospitals said that there were no resources and means to entertain the emergency patients at these centres. They said that since the new system was introduced under which presence of forensic expert and a judicial magistrate was mandatory in the postmortem examination of custodial deaths, the autopsy was usually delayed as both the officials were not available simultaneously.

A survey conducted by Dawn showed that inadequate allocation of funds and lack of proper facilities to the medico-legal departments at the Civil, Abbasi Shaheed and the JPMC have been hampering the performance of the medico-legal doctors.

At these centres, there are no proper apparatus to examine the nature of wounds and measure their depth, which is required for thesubsequent legal procedure.

The proper apparatus are not available and modern techniques have not been introduced to conduct a medical or criminal postmortem at these centres and the medico-legal officers perform postmortem examination on a body with the available outdated apparatus by applying conventional method.

A French team of medical experts had visited the city following an apparent suicide bombing in front of Sheraton Hotel on May 8, in which 11 French nationals and three Pakistanis were killed. The French experts, applying a modern technique and apparatus, reconstructed the face of the suicide bomber, who was blown up in the explosion.

The Pakistani forensic experts could not reconstruct the face of Asif Ramzi, a religious activist believed to be among those killed in a powerful explosion at a house in Korangi on Dec 19.