TIMERGARA, March 9: The people of Lower Dir are facing shortage of healthcare facilities and lack of doctors at the government-run hospitals and basic health units (BHUs) but the health department was doing nothing to address the issue, they complained here on Sunday.

People said that non-availability of doctors at the BHUs was multiplying their healthcare miseries. They said that majority of the BHUs was being run by medical technicians or dispensers instead of qualified doctors and there were no doctors to attend patients.

According to sources in the health department, for the 845,760 people of the district, there were not sufficient healthcare facilities. “We have only one DHQ, two THQs, four rural health centres (RHCs), 33 BHUs and nine MCH centres functional currently.”

In Lower Dir, the numbers of sanctioned posts of doctors at the District Headquarter Hospital Timergara was 45, out of which 35 doctors have been performing duty while the rest of the posts were lying vacant for a long time. The hospital was given category-A during the previous MMA-led provincial government, but without provision of facilities of the given category, the sources said.

There has been no skin specialist to serve in the hospital, they said, adding that a surgical specialist had been on two years leave and was running a private clinic outside the hospital. A doctor couple had been absent for the last nine months but could not be brought back despite several letters by the hospital administration. The posts of neurologist and nephrologist had also been vacant for years now.

They said that out of the 33 BHUs, only eight had doctors while 14 doctors appointed in the BHUs had been shifted to urban areas or being working in teaching hospitals as trainee medical officers in Peshawar.