NAROWAL: Health practitioners at the District Headquarters (DHQ) hospital are alleged to have shown negligence while treating patients resulting in death of a youngster in one such case.

Complaints are rife that doctors routinely misbehave with the patients and those accompanying them and even deny treatment in many cases.

In one such incident that took place on Wednesday, a young man died at the health facility due to what the family alleges, negligence of the duty doctor.

Bilal, a resident of Raaeb Plot village, brought his brother Muhammad Asif Ali, 30, to the hospital with complaints of pain in his stomach and chest. Bilal said he took Asif to the DHQ hospital emergency where paramedical staff administered the treatment. He said the doctor on duty at the emergency ward was informed about the critical condition of the patient but he didn’t bother to examine him and kept using his mobile phone.

Family blames doctor for youngster’s death in recent case

Bilal said his brother’s condition deteriorated and a dispenser and a nurse injected drugs. He said when the shift of doctors and paramedical staff changed, another doctor examined his brother and declared him dead.

The family protested against the doctor and demanded action against him.

Relatives of another patient complained about negligence of a lady doctor at the night shift. They brought Tahir Saleem, 20, a resident of Rehmanpura, to the hospital emergency for treatment of high fever and severe headache.

His brother Aamer Safeer said he requested the doctor on duty to check the patient but she became angry without any reason and refused to check his brother. “I’ll not check your patient and am not bothered whether your patient dies or not,” he quoted the doctor as having said. The family later shifted the patient to another health facility.

In yet another incident, Nasreen Bibi of Farooq Ganj took her old mother Sughra Bibi to the emergency ward where, she alleged, the lady doctor instead of checking the patient started shouting at her.

“When my mother was explaining the knee problem to the doctor, she touched her (doctor’s) knees to tell her about the exact spot of pain... This infuriated the doctor who abused me and my old mother and refused to examine her,” she said.

A similar case of doctor’s alleged apathy came to the surface when Muhammad Shahbaz, an accountant at Post Office, took his eight-year-old daughter Areeba to the emergency ward at night. The doctor on duty, he alleged, referred Areeba who was suffering from stomach problem to Room No 45 where the lady doctor was busy on her mobile phone.

He said he requested the doctor to check his daughter who was in pain but she did not pay heed. After waiting for 15 minutes, he said, he again asked the doctor to check the patient but “she became furious and insulted us”.

Shahbaz showed the hospital prescription on which the doctor wrote about the refusal to examine the patient and put her signature on it.

District Association of Human Rights Vice President Mian Muhammad Rafiq says there are frequent complaints about misbehaviour of doctors with patients who have no forum to highlight their plight. He claims that the health authorities and the deputy commissioner have been informed about it but in vain.

This correspondent tried to contact Health CEO Chaudhry Aslam who neither called back nor responded to messages.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2020