December 01, 2006	Friday	Ziqa'ad 9, 1427

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MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 30: The Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS), the only fully functional hospital in Muzaffarabad, has asked the government for a monthly grant of Rs100,000 to help it meet expenses on maintenance and sanitation.

Relevant sources told Dawn on Thursday that prior to last year's earthquake, the AJK government was providing Rs30,000 per month from Zakat fund to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Muzaffarabad as maintenance expenditures.

The CMH, then the major healthcare centre of the AJK capital, was also generating funds from its own resources. It was, however, badly damaged in the quake and shortly afterwards its management had ordered the entire civilian staff to report at the AIMS.

The move has almost brought the healthcare services in CMH to an end, and even one year after the devastating earthquake, the hospital is yet to be rebuilt.

The CMH management has resumed some medical services for the sake of justifying its presence on the premises, located in the heart of the capital, but only with a skeleton staff.

Contrarily, the workload in AIMS has increased manifolds with a daily turnout of 1,500 outdoor patients, as compared to around 400 before the quake. Its indoor capacity has also been increased from 70 beds to around 300 beds after the quake.

In view of the increased number of patients, the AIMS is facing a great deal of difficulty in coping with ever-increasing maintenance and sanitation problems.

The sources said that the AIMS administration had drawn the government's attention towards the fact that the amount allocated under miscellaneous expenditures head in its annual budget was too small and in the absence of any other resources to generate funds internally, it was in financial straits.

The hospital needed at least Rs100,000 per month to effectively tackle sanitation and maintenance problems, according to its administration.