HYDERABAD: Staff, including doctors, at the casualty ward of Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) avoided treating an unidentified patient brought to the hospital by Edhi volunteers, on the grounds that he was quite unclean.

The doctors and staff present on the duty said the patient should be given a bath and cleaned and then they would begin treatment inside the casualty ward. The patient was taken to the LUH by an Edhi ambulance’s driver, Tahir Ali, according to Edhi Centre incharge Mohammad Mukhtiar.

Tahir found the patient almost unconscious in a street with his hand lying in a small sewage drain in Hala Naka area after he was informed by concerned police. He got a letter from the police station before shifting him to the LUH. The man was bleeding from the mouth and needed urgent medical care. “Nobody was attending to him in the street and I somehow, along with a Rescue 1122 personnel, lifted and shifted him to the ambulance”, Tahir told Dawn.

Tahir said that when he took him to the LUH casualty ward, hospital guards didn’t let him go inside ward. “I informed the duty doctors about the patient. Three to four female doctors were present in the casualty ward, but I was told that the patient had to be cleansed first and only then they would check him,” Tahir said.

Tahir informed Mukhtiar about the doctors’ response. “Our centre’s incharge sent clothes and then I again informed the doctors in an emotional tone that now the patient has been readied like a groom. Will you now check him?” said Tahir. He said that the patient didn’t have any identity with him and since he was in semi semi-unconscious condition, he didn’t respond to anything.

He said that in the meantime while he was changing his unclean clothes, someone recorded the scene on mobile phone and circulated it on social media. He said that a male doctor then came to him after being told by the guards that his video had been recorded. Then, he said, the patient was examined and given treatment in the casualty ward.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2025