LAHORE: The Punjab government has declared the allocation of 10 designated beds mandatory at the paediatric surgery departments of all the state-run teaching hospitals across the province to ensure admission and treatment of children visiting there with severe burns.

A decision to the effect was taken at a high-level meeting of vice chancellors, principals, medical superintendents, chief executives and heads of all the teaching institutes of Punjab here on Thursday.

The marathon meeting was held in the wake of the recent incident of two-year-old Aliza who was allegedly denied admission and treatment by three major hospitals of Lahore.

She was brought from Okara when she suffered multiple burns on her body parts after boiling water fell on her and she was referred from the DHQ hospital of her native city to Lahore without any sort of treatment.

Minister announces recruitment of 90,000 paramedics, medics; Jinnah’s burn centre to be expanded

A couple of days back, Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi had taken notice of the incident of denying treatment to the infant and issued directions to the health authorities to review the standard operating procedure to ensure treatment to the children in burn cases.

Following this, Punjab Health Minister Prof Dr Yasmin Rashid had sought recommendations from the heads of the teaching institutes to ensure compliance with the CM’s order.

Chaired by Dr Yasmin Rashid, the Thursday’s meeting took many important decisions to avoid such incidents in future.

During the meeting, the VCs, principals, executive directors and medical superintendents of government hospitals presented suggestions to the health minister to improve treatment situation in emergency units.

“In case of negligence [in the future] in the treatment of patients in any government teaching hospital of Punjab, the respective head or MS of the hospital will be held responsible,” declared the health minister.

She said even ‘one per cent negligence’ would not be tolerated.

“The heads of all hospitals of Punjab are being given a final warning in this respect”, Prof Yasmin Rashid said.

After a unanimous decision of the meeting, she issued directions to allocate immediately 10 beds each in the paediatric surgery departments of all the government teaching hospitals in Punjab.

She also constituted a special committee to further draft and present suggestions to the government to bring about improvement in the treatment of patients in the accident and emergency units of the teaching hospitals.

The minister also announced making recruitment of 90,000 doctors, nurses and paramedical staff for the Punjab government hospitals to address the chronic shortage of the human resource.

“The Punjab government has also decided to establish 23 new mega government hospitals”, Prof Yasmin Rashid said adding that the step was taken following increase in the population of the province. She said construction work [on many of them] was in progress.

The meeting also decided to expand the burn centre in Jinnah Hospital, Lahore, to ensure that no adult or minor patient could be denied treatment in the future.

The Punjab government has also decided to build new emergency departments of Jinnah, Services and Lahore General hospitals.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2022