PESHAWAR: Afghan refugees have become a major burden on the provincial health facilities where they seek treatment like local population, sources said.

“In Peshawar, about 35 per cent of the patients visiting the hospitals are Afghan refugees. In Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex, they get facilities at par with the local population,” relevant officials said. The government is supposed to provide healthcare facilities to the local population because they pay taxes for it, but the refugees throughout the province visit these hospitals where they cause burden and resultantly local residents are deprived of their right to treatment.

The refugees do not pay taxes to the government, but avail of the facilities like Pakistani citizens, they said. “We allocate resources enough to deal with the local patients, but the sources are also used by the refugees,” they said.

The officials said that in past the local hospitals had been receiving some donations from international organisations in lieu of treatment provided to the refugees, but such financial support had stopped since long and the provincial government was providing them treatment at the cost of the local people.

35pc of patients visiting Peshawar hospitals are from Afghanistan

Doctors at the Peshawar teaching hospitals argued that they knew that it was illegal to examine Afghan refugees in OPD or admit them in wards, but it was against medical ethics to deny treatment to anybody.

“We have to examine any patient coming to the outpatients department. It is the job of the government to look into this issue. “We have been inviting the government’s attention towards the problem caused to the local population due to refugees, but to no avail,” said a senior consultant at one of the teaching hospitals.

He said that 35 per cent of the 1,200-bed Khyber Teaching Hospital, 1,500-bed Lady Reading Hospital and 700-bed Hayatabad Medical Complex were occupied by Afghan refugees. Besides, the local hospitals also receive chronically-ill patients from Afghanistan, he said.

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The official said that they had been receiving complaints from the local hospitals regarding arrival of refugees and the subsequent financial problems, but the international agencies were not willing to provide any assistance for their treatment.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health secretary Dr Aftab Akbar Durrani confirmed that Afghans had become a burden on the hospitals and said they received healthcare facilities from the money collected from taxpayers. “There is very little support for the treatment of Afghan refugees to the government. They get treatment from the budget issued for the province’s own population,” he said.

Dr Durrani said that the government would be allocating some additional amount to the local health facilities for treatment of the internally displaced persons from North Waziristan Agency. “Some displaced families have arrived in Peshawar for which we need to extend financial assistance to the teaching hospitals,” he said.

The health facilities have been providing treatment to displaced persons, especially in Bannu, where 80 per cent of the 53,000 displaced families lived. “The government has allocated Rs50 million to three hospitals in Bannu to strengthen the treatment facilities. Besides, several NGOs, UN agencies and army have been working there,” he said.

Meanwhile, a press release said that the health secretary visited the KTH on Saturday and asked the authorities concerned to offer all services to the patients in the evening and night shifts. Mr Durrani asked the staff to take special care of the sterilisation of operation theatre instrument to avoid post-surgery infections.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2014