KARACHI: “Rain is a blessing,” so they say. But not for everyone. Here it brings with it so many problems that we forget to count our blessings. There is flooding, There are extended power failures and there are injuries.

The emergency wards of the city’s hospitals see many cases of rain-related injuries during the current monsoon season. In most cases, the injured persons are discharged after initial medical treatment.

Commenting on the incidents of collapse of roofs due to rain, Yusuf Bhatti, the nursing supervisor at the department of accidents and emergency at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), said: “It is sad that constructions of some buildings are so poor here that they are unable to sustain the rains.”

About the kind of rain-related injuries they see normally, the nursing supervisor said that most of the injuries that they saw around this time were road traffic accidents (RTA). “The roads are moist and slippery and we see so many bike riders coming in with injuries after their bikes skidded on the road or off the road, or their brakes failed. It becomes worse when they have families with them,” he said.

“After that the next most common type of cases that we see in our emergency are of electric shock cases. Not just open or broken wires in the water, one can get an electric shock by just touching a broken and wet switch on the outer wall of your home when it is raining,” he pointed out.

Former executive director of JPMC Dr Seemin Jamali, who was also head of emergency there, told Dawn that they used to carry out mock exercises or drills ahead of the monsoons. “But then as time went by, the real patients started keeping us on our toes and in good practice.

She said that during the rains, there was plenty of road traffic injuries from slipping and skidding on the roads, from cars and motorcycles falling in the Malir river off the Korangi causeway and from falling into manholes. “Another thing that is quite common in the rains is gastroenteritis,” she said.

Dr Sabir Memon, Head of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Accident Emergency and Trauma Centre, said that they got a lot of head injuries, mostly of motorcyclists who had slipped on wet roads. “They should wear helmets. Helmets eliminate the threat to life though you can still get hurt. We also see many limb injuries so people riding or driving on the road when it is raining should be very careful. They should also not be speeding,” he said.

Dr Memon also said that since water and electricity should be kept as far away from each other as possible, people should also stay away from electric poles as well as be extra careful when handling electrical appliances or plugging them in.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2022