PESHAWAR, Sept 15: Patients in private rooms in city hospitals have been suffering because doctors do not visit them, health workers and relatives of the patients said.

"I have admitted my son in a private room of the Khyber Teaching Hospital due to severe diarrhoea but the doctors aren't coming to examine him as they do in the wards," Mohammad Raees of Mardan said.

He said he and other people in private rooms had to shift their children to the wards downstairs to get them examined by consultants, which was a painful process, especially when the child wasn't feeling well.

The same is the case in the other two hospitals - the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) - where relatives of the patients admitted in private rooms have to struggle to find doctors.

"My brother is critically ill because both of his legs have been plastered by an orthopaedic surgeon. The same surgeon, who had taken the operation fee from us at the hospital, isn't visiting my brother at the private room," said Gul Nawaz of Charsadda.

He said that every morning he had to arrange for a trolley and shift his brother to the ward to be seen by the consultant. He said that his brother felt immense discomfort while being shifted to the ward, but added that he had no option.

Hospital sources said that previously the consultants were given share in the amount generated from the patients admitted at the private rooms, due to which the consultants regularly visited the patients there.

The consultants were given Rs50 for a patient at the private rooms but about one year back the government stopped giving share to the consultants due to which they had lost interest in the private rooms.

Sources said that the decision to scrap the share of consultants from the private rooms' patients had been taken in view of the financial and administrative autonomy given to the teaching hospitals. The hospital authorities slashed the share of the consultants, which had not only hit the patients but also the hospitals' kitty.

"Now, most of the people who can afford the expenses of private room are reluctant to admit their near and dear ones. They fear that the doctors won't visit the private rooms, posing problems for their patients," they said.

According to rules of administrative and financial autonomy, these hospitals are required to seek new sources of income generation. The authorities, instead of giving more incentives to the doctors to admit more patients at the private rooms, had withdrawn the available facilities, which had dealt a severe blow to the hospitals.

As a result, most of the private rooms at the city's hospitals remain vacant. "Not only the consultants, but the junior doctors, nurses and paramedics are also unwilling to visit these patients in case of emergencies.

It is entirely the headache of the patients' relatives to look for the services of a consultant in case the condition of their patients deteriorate," said a doctor, whose wife is admitted at one of the city's hospitals.

The doctor said that the consultants do visit whenever there was a VIP patient at the private room. He said that the elder brother of former chief minister was being attended by the consultants at a hospital, despite the fact that his condition was normal.

Likewise, he said that an orthopaedic surgeon had to visit an MNA at a private room though his condition was satisfactory and had been admitted to the hospital for a routine check-up.

A senior consultant told Dawn that private rooms weren't part of the hospitals and, therefore, they had the right to attend or not to attend the patients admitted there. "I have strictly instructed the junior doctors not to visit the private rooms. We want all the patients to be admitted in the wards," he said.