I HAPPENED to visit the National Institute of Cardio Vascular Diseases recently and was greatly saddened by what I witnessed.

The approach to the hospital remains congested owing to public passenger vehicles stopping haphazardly to pick and drop passengers. That is not all. The drivers of many vehicles use their horns with relish not caring a whit that the area is a hospital zone where four major medical facilities are located.

If one approaches the NICVD from the road coming from Kalapul, there is a wide lane turning left that leads towards the Hockey Club of Pakistan and also an alternative approach to a few housing schemes and two federal government managed education institutions.

Some encroachers have set up shops on one side including a eatery doing brisk business and a parking lot. The other side is used by people who have accompanied patients from the hinterland and set up abode on the footpath as they have no place to stay.

All these factors are responsible for turning locality into a slum instead of the once serene hospital zone set up in the middle years of World War II.

S.H. Shah
Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2019