LAHORE: World Anaesthesia Day was observed on Friday with no senior medical teachers in most of the major districts in Punjab despite the fact that anaesthesiologists have been a guarantee to every successful surgical procedure.

Fresh statistics highlight the gravity of the situation, according to which only 2,445 anaesthetists were registered for an estimated 191.7 million people in the country. Of these, the actual number available was drastically low as a majority of them had moved abroad due to flaws in the induction process in the government health system.

World Anaesthesia Day is observed annually on Oct 16 across the world since safe anaesthesia is considered a blessing for painless surgeries. Despite knowing the significance of this major discipline, the day went unnoticed in both public and private sector in Punjab.

“Anaesthesia department is just like a pillar in a building; the stronger the pillar, safer is the building,” senior anaesthesiologist and former head of the department of Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI), Prof Dr Khalid Bashir, told Dawn. He is also president of the Lahore chapter of Pakistan Society of Anaesthesiologists.

He lamented that even the government ignored this major discipline as a majority of top positions of anaesthetists in Pakistan and particularly in Punjab were lying vacant for several years. Currently, he said, almost all major teaching hospitals in the city and in important districts were functioning without professors.

Most of them were either being headed by associate or assistant professors, Dr Bashir said, adding the scale of mismanagement in this particular subject could be seen by number of vacancies.

“Presently, there is no professor of anaesthesia available in mega teaching hospitals in Lahore, including Mayo Hospital and Lahore General Hospital, and in tertiary care hospitals of Multan, Bahawalpur, Sahiwal, Sialkot, Rawalpindi,” Prof Bashir added.

Talking about the significance of this critical care department, he said about 70 to 80 per cent workload of a hospital revolved around anaesthesia personnel.

“Today’s anaesthetists not only administer anaesthesia in operation theatres but are also involved in painless delivery, resuscitation in emergency, pain clinics and sedation for MRI/CT Scan besides managing intensive care units,” he said.

“We have been facing a shortage of anaesthesia doctors for over 30 years and the reasons are an increase in surgical disciplines, increased demand of anaesthetists globally and most importantly the non-serious attitude of the government,” Dr Bashir lamented.

The situation is compounded by less number of budding anaesthetists, he said, adding the allocated seats for house officers and postgraduate trainees were quite less as compared to the number in surgical discipline at state-run hospitals. For example, at the Lahore General Hospital, only one anaesthetist will be produced for 15 future surgeons.

“When an anaesthetist qualifies, there are little opportunities for him/her in public sector hospitals and he/she is forced to either leave the country or join private medical colleges,” Dr Bashir said.

Elaborating flaws in recruitment, he said in government hospitals they did not get appointed as senior registrars, whereas in private colleges they were offered instant appointments as assistant professors.

“In government hospitals, there is a lengthy procedure to fill vacant seats and we have repeatedly requested health authorities to allow principals to fill these seats on locum basis but nothing happened,” he added.

The situation is getting worse particularly in the provincial capital, as the government has transferred several trainers in anaesthesia to fill vacancies in newly established medical colleges in other districts.

Posts of teaching staff were lying vacant in almost every hospital. Teaching staff from Lahore were being posted out to add faculty to new medical colleges. This practice compromised existing training standards.

“If we look at district and tehsil headquarters hospitals, a majority of them have only one post of anaesthetist,” Dr Bashir revealed.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2015

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