26 October 2004	Tuesday	11 Ramazan 1425

KARACHI, Oct 25: The persons to be operated upon at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital are supposed to provide to its operation theatre staff surgical gloves, inquiries made by Dawn have revealed.

Very few, if any, of the material needed for the operations are provided by the hospital administration. "I spent between Rs3,000 and Rs4,000 on the supplies needed for my operation," Ghulam Sardar Leghari, who underwent a hernia operation last week, told this reporter.

Talking to this journalist in the hospital's Surgical Unit-I, Mr Leghari said: "The doctors even ask us to buy for them things like syringes, surgical blades and mesh," he said. "Some of these items, especially the mesh, are not easily available in the market these days."

The middle-aged, well-built man said he hardly had a relative or close friend in Karachi. "As a result, I had to look for these items myself. You can well imagine how discomforting that must have been for me in my condition." He added that the mesh alone cost Rs1,500.

Ayub Ali Khan, a jobless man, related a similar tale. He said he was admitted to the hospital on Sept 23. "Since then I have been on the waiting list."

Mr Khan said twice he was asked by the hospital staff to stop eating or drinking at the stroke of midnight. "This was done in anticipation of a possible operation the next day. But I am still to be operated on several days later."

He said he passed a general checkup, which was needed for every operation, on Sept 31. Almost all the patients, he said, had to wait for weeks, even months, before they undergo an operation.

"This is largely because the hospital's surgeons and other staff are not organized at all. And they don't give a damn about the patients, simply because they come from the lower strata of society."

Talking to Dawn in front of an operation theatre, Mr Khan said when he initially came to the hospital, he needed a hernia operation on the right side of his body. "But in the last more than a month, my condition has deteriorated so much that now I need operations on both sides."

Mr Khan's son then took Dawn to his ward. He said he had to bring in his own pillows. "We had to do this because no pillow was provided to us by the staff here. A bedsheet was indeed given to our patient, but it was so dirty that we decided to use our own sheets," said Mr Khan's son.

Answering a question, he said in the 10 days since Mr Khan's admission, the staff had not replaced the bedsheets. "And the ward is infested with mosquitoes and rats, which usually come in hordes at night."

Mr Leghari agreed with what Mr Khan's son had to say about the condition of the ward. He also showed this reporter the toilet, which was devoid of taps.

"No tap means no water. And no water means no cleaning. It also means that we have to bring in our own water," he remarked as he pointed towards the water cans lined under each bed.

"Not only that, there is no water cooler for the patients. This hospital provides water to the staff but not to the patients."