KOHAT: Though KDA teaching hospital is the main health facility of Kohat division that also caters to the patients of other southern districts, it has no burns facility and trauma centre. Similarly, a small facility like ultrasound was not available in the night shift at the emergency.

The hospital was inaugurated as category ‘A’ facility by then governor retired Lt-Gen Iftikhar Hussain Shah in 2000, but it was still short of 70 doctors.

The hospital has received stretchers and beds for trauma centre and wards a couple of days ago which are without foams.

As there has been no required extension in the hospital since long the stretchers have been placed in the galleries. MRI and CT scan facilities are also not available in the hospital and patients are referred to a nearby private hospital.

An official Rashid Bokhari told this correspondent on Sunday that the hospital was being placed in categories ‘B’ and ‘C’ since 2000 and now informally it was a category ‘A’ facility, but it would take time to get the required number of staff and machinery.

He said that a neurosurgeon had been transferred to Kohat from Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar, more than a year ago, but due to lack of facilities not a single operation could be carried out.

He said that trauma centre would be complete when all the neurosurgeon, orthopaedic surgeon and separate general surgeon were appointed and machinery made available.

Two years have passed to the visit of the special committee of provincial assembly to the women and children hospital, the city’s other major hospital, following complaints, but its reconstruction still remains a dream.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2018