SKARDU, July 1: People of Baltistan are facing immense hardship because of shortage of doctors in the district headquarters hospital. Besides, the hospital has no specialist.

Medical staff at the DHQ hospital is overburdened because the hospital caters to the needs of two districts, Skardu and Ghanche. It was established in 1973 with an initial capacity of 50 beds and sanctioned strength of 27 doctors.

The number of beds was gradually increased to 145 with establishment of female ward, child ward, isolation ward and eye patient’s ward but its staff strength remained at 27. Even these 27 posts never filled due to which available doctors perform duties in trying conditions.

In a survey conducted by Dawn, it was revealed that posts of orthopaedists, skin specialists, heart specialists, bone and joints specialists, physiotherapists, neurologist, pathologists, psychotics and kidney specialists have not been approved since the establishment of the hospital. Four posts of lady-doctors were sanctioned in the beginning but now only two lady doctors are performing duties against a requirement of seven lady-doctors.

Similarly, there are only four medical officers in the hospital against the requirement of 15 MOs. Five surgeons and medical specialists are needed but only two are available. Two approved posts of gynaecologists have been lying vacant since the establishment of the hospital, multiplying difficulties of women patients.

Women are the hardest hit. Owing to unavailability of gynaecologists people are compelled to get services of untrained nurses in delivery cases. Sometimes people have no option but to get the services of male gynaecologists. Being the only DHQ hospital for two districts, the number of patients sometimes reaches 1,000 figure while approximately 500 patients are operated in a month.

“The doctors are forced to do 100-110 hours duty in a week against 46 hours of approved duty,” a medical officer said. Due to constraints in facilities, he said, most patients were referred to Rawalpindi and Islamabad hospitals which itself was a great problem because people of Baltistan were poor and lived in the remotest and the most backward area of the country.