NAROWAL, Nov 24: The DHQ hospital here has been working without a labour room and related facilities for the last ten years, compelling the pregnant women to go to private clinics being allegedly run by the hospital doctors. Reports said the incubator machines purchased five years back had gone out of order because these were never used by the doctors concerned.

The affected people complained that most of the women doctors posted at the hospital were running their private clinics and were least interested in provision of maternity facilities there to those in need of such services.

A hospital patient, Nasreen, said she had been advised by an assistant of a woman doctor to go to the private hospital being run by the same doctor for delivery. She said the women doctors at the hospital did not even bother to check the patients properly.

A rights activist, Sajid Mughal, said despite the fact that both provincial and federal health ministers belong to the district, the DHQ hospital was still without necessary facilities.

He said many women in the district had reportedly died during pregnancy due to lack of delivery facilities, demanding the government should provide such services for the local women immediately.

The hospital superintendent, Dr Zulfiqar Ali, said he could do nothing to improve the situation. He said various social and political organizations of the area had demanded of the high-ups to set up a Gynaecology unit at the hospital.