KARACHI: The Sindh Government Qatar Hospital in Orangi Town faces a shortage of essential medicines as the management of the public health facility has already spent a huge amount of its budget on purchasing non-essential medicines from local companies without the consent of its pharmacists and two other senior officials, it has emerged.

The hospital is the only government health facility in Orangi Town that serves millions of its residents and adjoining localities.

Amid absence of essential medicines at the hospital, the patients visiting the facility are said to be facing serious problems.

Dawn tried to reach out to the spokesperson for the Sindh health department and the medical superintendent of the hospital but to no avail.

Health facility has bought supplements but lacks ‘essential’ drugs

Last month, five children were bitten by a stray dog in the area. They were taken to the Qatar Hospital, which referred them to the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi because of non-availability of rabies immunoglobulin (RIG), a lifesaving serum essential for all serious animal exposures.

Sources in the health facility told Dawn that the 400-bed hospital was allocated a “huge budget” for procurement of drugs but it was surprising that even essential medicines like paracetamol, azithromycin, were not available in quantity at the facility.

“But at the same time non-essential medicines have been purchased by spending more than Rs20 million, bypassing the hospital pharmacist and administration,” said the source citing details of the medicine inventory of the hospital.

According to an official document, a copy of which is available with Dawn, the hospital had procured huge quantities of supplements — ‘folic acid’, ‘calcium carbonate’, ‘zinc’, ‘sachet cranberry with bilberry’ — and anti-fungal capsule ‘fluconazole’.

“Such procurement has not only resulted in overspending for the second quarter of the current financial year, but also made further orders of essentially required medicines difficult,” said a source.

The sources said that the issue was also raised by some officials expressing concerns over non-availability of essential medicines at the hospital but in vain.

They cited the directives issued by the Sindh government at the beginning of the financial year to all government hospitals giving guidelines for procurements of medicines.

“You are hereby directed to ensure the procurement of listed items keeping in view of demand, consumption and availability of budget,” said a July 2024 letter of the Sindh health department to medical superintendents of all government hospitals with a list of essential medicines.

“In case of purchases of excess quantity of any item, the head of procuring agency will be responsible. It must ensure to furnish the copies of supply orders and contract agreement as and when issued to the contractors to this office as well as Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority, Karachi.”

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2024