LARKANA: Patients have to bear with extremely suffocating conditions at Chandka Medical College Hospital’s (CMCH) city block amid frequent power outages and lack of alternative electricity source for the facility with temperature rising to 45-plus degrees Celsius for past three days.

Mercury touched 44.5 degree Celsius on Friday with around 60 per cent humidity, down from Thursday’s 46.5 degrees Celsius in Larkana and 47 degree Celsius in Moenjodaro, according to local Met office.

The hospital’s 500kV generator, which is its only alternative source of power, has been out of order since it developed a fault three days ago, said Medical Superintendent Dr Abdul Hameed Soomro.

“We are trying to get the fault repaired but it will take longer than expected because the generator is 10 years old and cannot bear much load,” he said.

The CMCH city block housed departments of medicine, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, ENT, chest, psychiatry, neurosurgery, MRI, CT scan, radiology, main outpatient department, pathology laboratory, accident and emergency unit and dialysis unit, said the hospital managers.

Many scheduled surgeries and dialysis had been postponed and the problem had been conveyed to secretary of health but in vain, said the MS.

He had approached deputy commissioner, district and sessions judge to get the problem resolved but Sukkur Electric Power Company (Sepco) was reluctant to provide an express line to the hospital.

Associate Prof Dr Ghulam Abbas Qadri complained about abrupt stoppage of dialysis and said that patients were undergoing dialysis on 10 beds when machines ground to a halt and now their session would stretch amid unbearable heat and lack of alternative power supply adding to their agony, he said.

He said the dialysis machine hardly provided five minutes backup to the process when the power went off. If the duration increased, blood would start clotting in tubes connected with the patient and at least one pint of blood would be lost, he said.

He said dialysis could not be continued amid such conditions and called for express electricity feeder to provide uninterrupted dialysis.

The MS said that he and his counterparts before him had time and again written to Sepco for either changing schedule of loadshedding or connecting this tertiary hospital with an express feeder to have continuous power supply but the demand had been put on the backburner.

He said a letter to superintendent engineer (operation) of Sepco on May 26 stated that CMCH (city block) needed uninterrupted power supply round the clock to continue services. The standby power generator had developed a fault and it would take 10 to 15 days to get it repaired, he said in the letter.

He called for declaring Al-Murtaza feeder, which supplied power to the hospital, a loadshedding-free line to facilitate the hospital.

The copies of the letter were sent to secretary of health, director general of health, district and sessions judge and deputy commissioner to seek their help in resolving the issue.

In response, the district and sessions judge Syed Sharafuddin Shah wrote a letter to the executive engineer of Sepco on May 27 referring to the MS’s letter and asked for uninterrupted power supply to the hospital.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2021