0
PESHAWAR, July 24: Unhygienic food items and soft drinks are sold on footpaths across the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH).
“The hospital does not provide food to the patients, mainly because the patients do not avail the facility and waste food items,” chief executive of the KTH Dr Ziaul Islam told Dawn .
As the hospital does not provide food, the patients and their attendants are left with no option but to buy unhygienic food items sold outside the hospital.
The price of food items ranges from five to twenty rupees.
The food is cheap but is cooked in an unhygienic manner. The vendors and owners of the dingy hotels and cafes outside the hospitals dump the garbage in the open, polluting the air where they sell edibles and soft drinks.
“Substandard food items increase the chances of the spread of diseases like Hepatitis B and C and cholera,” Dr Zia said.
The canteens in the two hospitals also do not provide hygienic food. “Low quality soft drinks are sold at the canteen of the LRH,” an attendant to a patient complained.
Dr Ziaul Islam said that he had discussed the problem in the meetings of advisory committee of the KTH. He said that the hospital administration was trying to come up with an alternative arrangement.
FACILITIES: Inadequate education and training facilities for paramedics have been adversely affecting the performance of the healthcare institutions in the province.
In January 1999 the government established two undergraduate paramedical institutions, one each at Swat and Dera Ismail Khan in with a view to provide the opportunity of advance learning to paramedics.
A postgraduate paramedical institute (PGMI) was inaugurated the same day at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Peshawar which happened to be the first of its kind in the entire country.
At the time of inauguration of the PGMI at the LRH, the then government had hinted that it would be affiliated with the University of Peshawar. But five years have passed by and the decision is yet to be implemented.
