PESHAWAR, July 1: Expensive life-saving drugs set aside for poor patients are being misappropriated in the casualty departments of the city's public sector hospitals, doctors and health workers said.
The NWFP government had allocated Rs60 million for the treatment of the critically-ill patients brought to the hospitals' casualty departments. "But, the hospital staff, including doctors, paramedics and nurses, misappropriate these drugs," a doctor at one of the city's major hospitals said.
He said that the drugs' misuse was creating a problem for the emergency patients. "Patients were earlier required to buy medicines from the market, which was beyond the means of the poor patients."
These medicines were given to poor patients free of cost, said a doctor. The government had allocated Rs25 million for Lady Reading Hospital and 12.5 million each to the Khyber Teaching Hospital, Hayatabad Medical Complex and Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad, to improve the treatment of the seriously-ill patients.
According to the prescribed procedure, critically-ill patients were given drugs free for at least 24 hours. Casualty Medical Officers (CMOs) said that they were finding it hard to sustain the staff's pressure for free drugs.
According to them, a majority of the hospital staffers compelled them to prescribe these drugs on casualty OPD slips, enabling them to obtain medicines free from the hospitals' pharmacy stores.
"We refer serious patients to the wards concerned and then give them prescribed drugs for 24 hours. But some people allege that doctors at some of the wards prescribe more medicines to the patients in their bid to keep the surplus drugs for themselves,"said a CMO.
He said that a doctor could prescribe eight surgical gloves, eight doses of anti-biotics and pain-killers and intravenous fluids for critically-ill patients. In fact, the same patient needed only a single dose of pain-killer and anti-biotics, he said.
Likewise, he said, a patient with knee fracture was advised 10 gypsonas instead of only two required by him at the orthopaedic ward of one of the city hospitals. A CMO said that they needed additional staff for the distribution of emergency drugs to the patients.
A staff nurse was also required to attend to patients at the casualty departments besides issuing drugs to the serious patients and making entries in the stock registers. Health Minister Inayatullah Khan told Dawn that a monitoring system was being devised to ensure fair distribution of medicines.
He said that a committee had been constituted for the distribution of drugs which would hold its meeting in a couple of days. Mr Khan said that a focal person would be appointed in every teaching hospital who would monitor the distribution of medicines.
