MULTAN, Nov 10: Situated in the heart of the city over a piece of eight kanal, the 50-year-old Fatima Jinnah Hospital offers no service to its visitors except providing a spacious residence to its in charge.

The hospital was established in 1951 with an aim to handle gynaecology and obstetric cases. The building was constructed on a piece of land lying between Ghanta Ghar Chowk and Fawara Chowk. Later, its administration was transferred to the Nishtar Hospital.

People say the hospital, for all practical purposes, has ceased functioning for the last several years.

Several attempts by Dawn to contact the hospital in charge Dr Najma Badar could not be materialized. “Dr Sahiba is busy in a meeting in the Nishtar Hospital,” was the reply of a peon on duty every time this correspondent visited the hospital.

The patients who have visited the hospital in recent past say they have never seen the in charge. “She only examines the patients privately at her official residence adjacent to the hospital,” they claim.

According to another visitor, a midwife acts on behalf of the doctor and charges heavily from the patients.

Recently, a health department team accompanied by army officials of the district monitoring team paid a surprise visit to the hospital and found everything in total disarray. A member of the raiding party, a senior health official, told Dawn that the rooms were in a dilapidated condition while the equipment had been rusting for not being in use for a long time. “The hospital building is near to collapse,” the official observed.

He said it seemed that whatever the health department had allocated for the maintenance of the hospital building was spent on the uplift of the official residence of the hospital in charge.

He suggested that the land and the building of the hospital should be handed over to the nearby civil hospital (DHQ hospital) to make better use of it. He said the civil hospital which had a daily turnout of 700 to 900 patients at its OPD was in dire need of more space, especially after housing the children hospital on its premises.

Currently, the civil hospital is catering to the needs of people from the walled city with mere a 20-bed facility. — Nadeem Saeed