LARKANA, Feb 11: Six out of a dozen dialysis machines in the Chandka Medical College Teaching Hospital's urology department are not working for the past one-and-a-half-month, sources said on Wednesday.

They said the room where the costly machines were fitted was locked while another portion housing the rest of the machines was working. The head of the urology department, Prof Qurban Shaikh, confirmed the non-functioning of the six dialysis machines for the past 20 days but sources said that they had not been used for the past 45 days.

The reverse osmosis system, meant for supplying sterilized water for dialysis sessions, had collapsed, leaving five of the dialysis machines idle, while another machine was already out of order, the department's official in charge said.

The matter, he said, had been conveyed to the CMCH's medical superintendent but no technician had yet arrived to repair the machines. Referring to another reverse osmosis unit, that fed the remaining dialysis machines, Prof Shaikh said it also needed urgent repairs and might collapse. He said the machines needed to be maintained regularly.

The CMCH's urology department caters to the needs of kidney patients from as far away as Punjab and Balochistan besides serving those from the Larkana, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Sukkur, Khairpur and Dadu districts.

The additional medical superintendent of the hospital, Dr Mushtaque Haidri, blamed technicians for the delay in repair of the faulty reverse osmosis unit and said they had not responded despite being contacted repeatedly.

He dispelled the impression that patients were suffering because of the shortage of machines and said the staff's duty timings had been doubled. He said a dialysis session costed around Rs1,500 and the kidney patients were required to attend at least two sessions in a week. He said the high cost of treatment discouraged the poor patients.

It was learnt that a scheme, introduced during the tenure of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, under which the government bore all expenses incurred in this regard, had been abandoned.

Dr Haidri said Zakat funds allocated for dialysis had been exhausted and 'user charges' were being used to support the deserving patients. Dr Shaikh complained about the sub-standard quality of the instruments purchased for the urology department.

Another costly instrument, laparoscope, given to the department of surgery and gynaecology, had also gone out of order, sources said. They said the head of the surgery department, Prof Sikandar Shaikh, had time and again called for its repair but nothing had been done in this regard. Patients and doctors concerned urged the Sindh government to intervene in this regard.