April 28, 2003	Monday	Safar 25, 1424

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RAWALPINDI, April 27: The Punjab government has admitted it committed ‘mistakes’ in making key appointments to Rawalpindi autonomous hospitals’ board of governors (BoG), leading to their rapid decline, sources said on Sunday.

This confession was reportedly made by senior officials of the provincial government while giving a briefing to President Gen Pervez Musharraf about issues pertaining to the University of Health Sciences and autonomy of hospitals.

While discussing problems encountered by the system of autonomy introduced for mega-hospitals during the military government, they said wrong choices for key positions in the BoG of Rawalpindi hospitals and the administrative setup were one of the main reasons for the failure of the entire system in the province.

The patient care at all the three autonomous hospitals of the city registered a steep decline after the takeover of the autonomous setup and aggravated to such an extent that at one stage emergency wards of these hospitals were without medicines.

For most of the period these hospitals remained afflicted with administrative turmoil bringing the entire working to a standstill.

The problem started with the transfer of the medical superintendent of Holy Family Hospital, Dr Nisar Cheema, and victimization of other doctors opposed to the administration.

The BoG chairman himself fell victim to the polarization in the hospitals and had to resign. The BoG too was later dissolved.

One of the former members of the BoG Mian Pervez Aslam had on one occasion told this reporter that the instable administrative conditions at the Rawalpindi autonomous hospitals prevented philanthropists from donating to these institutions. One of the biggest failures of the setup was its inability to raise funds for improving the ailing financial conditions of the autonomous hospitals.

The government, while installing the new system, had envisaged that the autonomous setup would be able to explore unconventional avenues of revenue generation, particularly the philanthropist donations.

Reports from autonomous hospitals in the rest of the province show that substantial amounts were raised by their respective boards. Whereas, the administration of the Rawalpindi autonomous hospitals had cut the budgets of component hospitals to meet its administrative overheads, which had a telling impact not only on the availability of medicines, but also on the overall patient care.

While the patient care was being neglected, reports about allegedly unauthorized purchases of computers, photocopiers, airconditioners, carpets and cars made rounds in the press.

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