LARKANA: The only magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scan machines in Chandka Medical College Hospital have been out of order for the past six months, multiplying by several times the health bill of the poor patients who have to pay exorbitant charges to get the required tests done at private laboratories.

The hospital managers and technical staff operating the machines disclosed to Dawn on Saturday on condition of anonymity that the MRI machine had developed a software fault.

They had written time and again to the company that had installed the machine but it did not respond. They contacted the firm again just a couple of days ago but in vain, they said.

The 1,300-plus bed Chandka Medical College Hospital encompassed Shaikh Zayed Hospital for Women, CMC Children Hospital and CMC city block that housed big units of orthopaedics, ophthalmology, radiology and pathology laboratories etc but unfortunately, this huge health facility had only one MRI and one CT scan machine to cater to massive patients load from Larkana division, parts of Dadu, Punjab and Balochistan.

With the machines out of order, the poor patients who rely on government hospital for free treatment have to bear extra costs to have the necessary tests carried out at private centres.

Only one X-ray machine was operational in the casualty department while the other was lying idle due to faults. The digital X-ray machine in the radiology department resumed working on Tuesday after engineers came from Sukkur to repair it, the sources said.

The hospital’s emergency unit regularly receives patients of head injury and road accidents who urgently require MRI and CT scans but they have to rush to a private facility first to get the tests done before their treatment begins.

A professor who asked not to be identified remarked: “When the hospital doesn’t have vital machines functioning then what to talk of other facilities. Moreover, the department of orthopaedics is not getting essential material used in surgery, forcing surgeons to keep postponing operations most of the time.”

“If you don’t have autoclave working then what can you say about the state of sterilisation which is a must for undertaking surgical procedures,” said sources, adding that each time they conveyed it to the store they received the reply ‘not available’.

The sources said that tenders invited by the hospital management for purchasing medicines had been postponed for the sixth time. The hospital is authorised to purchase 15 per cent of drugs in local market while the health department is to procure 85pc of medicines for the healthcare facility. “We have never witnessed medicine tenders postponed for the sixth time,” said the sources in the accounts section of the hospital.

GDA MPA Moazzam Abbasi said the obtaining conditions in the hospital suggested that perhaps the PPP government had forgotten its commitments to people.

He said that conditions at CMCH and its affiliated units in Larkana were quite depressing as patients were deprived of required services. All the issues of Larkana including lack of basic civic facilities and declining quality of healthcare services would be raised in Sindh Assembly, he said.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2018