11 November 2004	Thursday	27 Ramazan 1425

PESHAWAR, Nov 10: A Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) is facing closure due to lack of staff, health officials said.

The NICU was established in 1997 at the hospital to provide intensive care facilities to critically-ill patients, said a doctor.

"Now the ward is almost on the verge of closure, because of the non-availability of staff," a source at the hospital, said.

The registrar of the ward had been given a long leave by the government, an official said.

"For the last three days, there is no doctor at the NICU which has prompted the doctors to admit the critically-ill patients in general wards," said sources, adding the registrar had been refused grant of leave by the hospital's administration, but he availed it through health minister.

State-of the-art equipment worth Rs7.7million were installed to provide treatment facilities to the neonatal below the age of one month.

"About 200 seriously-sick patients were admitted to the unit on annual basis since its inception," the sources said.

At the time of launching the unit, three-Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) and Infectious Disease Unit (IDU) were also commissioned. But of these the PICU is yet to see the daylight, while the two other NRC and IDU are being run through the services of routine staff, who are wor-king in the children or nursery wards.

"The Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit needed permanent staff round-the-clock. At least one doctor is required to be present at the ward," a source said.

He said that there was one doctor, who ran the ward in morning shift, while the evening and night shifts were covered by doctors from children wards. At present the doctor, who used to run the ward had also left and there was no way except to close the ward.

According to the hospital administration, they had sent several requests since the unit's establishment to the secretary health and other officials to assign permanent staff to the unit, but no response was forthcoming.

The sources said that the patients were charged Rs400 a day, which was deposited with the administration, which in turn consumed the amount on users' charges.

On contrary, the patients paid Rs10,000 in the hospitals of Karachi and Islamabad apart from other expenses spent on travelling and staying in the cities.

The NICU also collected donations from charity organizations, zakat and NGOs which was spent on the patients' treatment. But the main support came from the staff, especially doctors and nurses.

According to WHO's guidelines one doctor is required for two patients, but we had lost the services of that one doctor too, who managed six patients.