KARACHI, June 21: The Children’s Hospital in North Karachi, which will soon open its doors to sick young people after remaining unutilized for five years since the construction of its buildings, faces uncertain times because the operating budget has not been approved yet.
Its SNE (Sanctioned New Expenditure), under which doctors and paramedical staff are to be appointed on a permanent basis, has also not been okayed. In addition, nobody knows for sure whether the hospital will fall under the jurisdiction of the provincial government or the city district government.
All this is despite the personal interest of Governor Ishratul Ibad in the fate of the hospital, whose intervention is instrumental in bringing it back from a certain death. So, how will the hospital perform or indeed whether it will survive for more than a few months following the opening of its OPD is anybody’s guess.
The buildings of the said healthcare centre — also known as the Karachi Children’s Hospital — were built between 1996 and 1998 at a cost of Rs24 million. The equipment were acquired at a cost of Rs20 million. But the hospital remained unutilized due to a lack of operating funds, stated to be in the range of only Rs10 million per year.
When Dr Ishratul Ibad learnt of this a couple of months ago, he ordered the opening of the hospital’s outpatient and casualty departments as soon as possible. Doctors and paramedical staff were deputed from other hospitals and governmental initiatives to meet this objective. However, the core issue of provision of the operating funds remains to be addressed, inquiries and interviews have revealed.
When approached by Dawn on Saturday, the medical superintendent-designate of the hospital — Dr Asif Zaman — neither confirmed nor denied the presence of an approved operating budget. He just said that the outpatient and casualty departments were slated to open before the 15th of next month.
In response to a question, Dr Zaman disclosed that not a single penny had been released to facilitate the opening of the two departments. Talking to this reporter in his office inside the hospital building, he said personal contacts and resources had made the ongoing painting and decoration work possible.
Dr Zaman said his aim was to consolidate the hospital’s position in the weeks and months following the opening of the outpatient and casualty departments. “I will try my best to take this hospitals to great heights. Opening the OPD is not the only goal.”
He claimed that nobody visiting his hospital would feel or say that it was a state-owned hospital. “We will make sure that all the negatives of the government hospitals are avoided but all the positives, like free medicines and consultation, are there all the time.”
Answering a question, Dr Zaman said 57 doctors had been deputed to the hospital, 27 of whom came from the School Health Programme. Some doctors had been deputed from hospitals like the Civil Hospital Karachi.
He rather reluctantly acknowledged that matters regarding his hospital were being handled on an ad hoc basis. The MS-designate said philanthropists should take an interest in his hospital because the authorities were unlikely to be forthcoming.
Asked about the problems being faced by him, Dr Zaman said some of the deputed paramedical staff did not look like willing workers. “It seems all the departments which have deputed their staff to my hospital have only sent their troublemakers to us.”
He criticized the pace with which the Public Works Department was working. “They have been given a grant of Rs2.3 million but have only deputed one person who is trying to make short work of the assignment.”
The deputy medical superintendent — Dr Pervez Anwar — showed Dawn around the hospital. He said the medical superintendent had been asked to make the outpatient and casualty departments ready for inauguration by July 4.
He said three or four children visited the hospital every day. “And the hospital has not been opened formally yet.” More than 2,000 children were expected to visit the hospital’s OPD every day after it is formally inaugurated.
Meanwhile, two government officials, on condition of anonymity, said the Karachi Children Hospital and Landhi Medical Complex were both handled in a hurried and ad hoc fashion by the government. “We are happy that these hospitals are being opened, no doubt.
“But we are not happy with the unsustainable manner in which the problems involved have been approached. Today the Landhi Medical Complex is better off because, due to political reasons, its SNE has been approved and its budget is also in safe hands.
“But it’s an entirely different story for the Karachi Children’s Hospital. It will face a lot of uncertainty in the days to come.”
