PESHAWAR: The public sector medical teaching institutions in the provincial capital are finding it hard to accommodate patients requiring hospitalisation in paeds, gynea, orthopedic, neurosurgery, pulmonology and other super specialties, according to sources.

The reason being given by medics is the weakness of these medical disciplines at the district headquarters hospitals due to which the ultimate destination of patients remains the teaching hospitals in Peshawar.

In all three such facilities in Peshawar including Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH), Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) the wards remain replete with patients despite establishment of new wards.

The situation with regard to availability of beds in KTH is so grave that it has issued a press release advising the patients to visit other hospitals due to extreme shortage of beds.

Bed occupancy rate in Peshawar health facilities too high as compared to WHO’s guidelines

It said that bed occupancy rate had reached 98 per cent against the WHO’s guidelines that it shouldn’t exceed 85 per cent so that space could be made available to critically-ill and injured patients.

KTH spokesman Farhad Khan told Dawn that patients were being brought to orthopedics, paeds, gynea, nephrology and pulmonology wards in droves where 100 per cent beds were filled.

“We have been regularly updating and expanding services in view of patients’ load but the number of patients is not receding. New wards and specialties are being created but people continue to come here from all the districts and Fata,” he said.

Mr Khan said that they could not reject any patients but could simply advise them to visit their nearest hospitals, which had been equipped and staffed by the health department to provide better services to people in their own districts.

The story of the province’s biggest health facility, LRH, in no different where on an average 5,000 patients visit the outpatient departments per day but like the KTH, it has been coping with the problem of patients’ load.

LRH medical director Prof Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi told Dawn that they had been facing an uphill task to provide beds to patients in paeds, gynea and other wards due to which the chances of health complication arose. He said that patients risked infection due to overcrowding and admitting two patients on a single bed.

“We want to provide specialised treatment to patients. The health department is in the process of improving primary and secondary level facilities to reduce load on tertiary care hospitals,” he said.

Prof Mukhtiar said that bed occupancy rate varied from department to department but overall it was about 90 per cent. “Average length of patients’ stay at the ward is four days. A couple of months ago, the patients’ stay used to be around six days which was reduced to four days owing to prompt services,” he added.

Prof Mukhtiar said that they had opened 38-beded ward at Emergency Department exclusively for children a few months ago where patients were admitted and treated by specialist doctors. “Same arrangements have been put in place for gynea patients in Emergency Department to extend them quick treatment,” he said.

In HMC, patients have to wait for long to get admission and undergo operation owing to workload. This is affecting the treatment of people, who cannot be properly cured at the local level hospitals. All the tertiary care hospitals are meant to admit chronically-ill people, referred to them from district hospitals, but the patients come directly to these facilities as doctors say they cannot refuse their treatment.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2018