PESHAWAR, Sept 22: Shortage of drugs at the emergency wards of the city hospitals have added to the sufferings of the patients in need of urgent medical aid, a doctor told Dawn on Monday.

“It is due to non-availability of medicines that patients have to wait for a long time to get their troubles relieved. Critically injured and ill patients are forced to purchase pain killers and disposable syringes from the market,” said a casualty medical officer (CMO) at one of the city hospitals.

“A young woman was brought with acute abdominal pain to the casualty department on Sunday night, but there was no drug or injection. Her brother went to the market and found all the shops closed. She was screaming with pain,” said a staff nurse at a teaching hospital.

According to the nurse, she rushed to a surgical unit and took an analgesic injection along with a disposable syringe from the bedside locker of a patient and administer it to the woman.

An official at a hospital on the condition of anonymity told Dawn that out of the total Rs30million, they had received only Rs3.5million to purchase drugs for the first quarter of the current fiscal year. The operation theatre alone required Rs7million a month and the amount released fell too short of meeting the hospital’s requirements.—Correspondent