LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has termed it a matter of shame for Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif that his party MPA has raised a voice against the terrible condition of public hospitals in the province on the floor of the Punjab Assembly.

In a statement issued here on Thursday, PTI Punjab President Ejaz Chaudhry said that PML-N MPA Sheikh Allauddin had confessed in his adjournment motion, lying pending in the assembly for debate, that the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Children’s Hospital and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital were treating three to four patients on one bed.

“If this is the situation of public hospitals in the provincial metropolitan, the public can imagine the worst state of healthcare facilities in far-off areas in the province,” he added.

Mr Chaudhry said the Khadam-i-Aala needed to mend his ways of governance, as he himself was a health minister but was trying to run the health department through his adviser.

He said the CM’s adviser on health had not been able to settle the issues of young doctors during the last four years and thus how could such an incompetent person run the entire health department.

Secretary-General Dr Yasmin Rashid said the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended a 50:1 ratio of general ward to ICU beds and there should be a trained nurse for each bed in the ICU.

As per the WHO Global Code of Practice on International Recruitment of Health Personnel, she said, the ratio of nurses to population in Pakistan was estimated to be one nurse to 3,626 people.

Referring to this situation, she said, no-one was ready to invest on health. She said the Sharif brothers had been ruling Punjab for three decades but still they were not able to change the fate of public hospitals.

She said she wished Shahbaz Sharif could listen to his MPA and start thinking about the poor patients, who had no other choice but to visit public hospitals for treatment.

Information secretary Andleeb Abbas said the self-proclaimed Khadam-i-Aala had no understanding of patients suffering in public hospitals.

She said Mr Sharif had always preferred to go to hospital in London for his treatment and that too on public money. “If the chief minister dares to get his treatment from any public hospital, then he will get the first-hand knowledge of people’s problems,” she said.

Ms Andleeb said the ruling class always got treatment from abroad even for minor ailments, adding that the Sharif brothers could never relate to problems of a common man.

She said that emergency departments of public hospitals were in pathetic conditions as they were presenting a picture of gross mismanagement.

She said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had turned around public hospitals within two years but unfortunately in Punjab no-one was ready to spend on health and education sectors.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2015

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