BAHAWALPUR: Administrations of local government health facilities have expressed inability to accommodate the influx of diabetes patients from adjacent district headquarters (DHQ) hospitals seeking insulin injections due to their non-availability in their districts.

According to medics of the local health facilities, including Bahawal Victoria Hospital (BVH) and the Civil Hospital on Jhangiwali Road, a large number of diabetics from other districts visited these hospitals to get insulin injections, saying they were unavailable at the government hospitals in their districts.

They added that the patients had to travel for long to Bahawalpur to get the injections.

Dr Muhammad Hamid, the focal person for the Jhangiwali Road Civil Hospital, confirmed to Dawn that there was a rush of diabetics seeking insulin from them.

Most of the visitors belonged to the nearby Lodhran and Vehari districts from where the patients alleged that they could not get insulin injections due to which they had to travel all the way to Bahawalpur.

He expressed his inability to accommodate the crowd of diabetics from outside the district, saying that each DHQ hospital had an insulin quota for visiting patients.

The Bahawalpur hospitals have a large number of their own registered diabetes patients, who were periodically provided insulin, owing to which it was not possible for the local hospitals to accommodate a large number of patients from other districts.

He argued that local hospitals have contacted other hospitals requesting them not to send their patients to Bahawalpur owing to their limited stock of insulin.

Meanwhile, the in-charge of physiotherapy department of the Civil Hospital, Dr Tariq Malik, has asked the government to increase the number of staff members in the department.

He said he was the only physiotherapist in the department handling over 40 patients daily and the number was increasing daily.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2019