PESHAWAR, Oct 1: The patients needing emergency medical treatment are facing immense problem due to absence of doctors and lack of facilities at the city hospitals, doctors told Dawn on Tuesday.

“The patients suffer a great deal due to inadequate emergency services at the three — Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) — teaching hospitals of the city,” said a doctor at the KTH.

According to him, these hospitals do not have pain-killer injections, disposable syringes and other life-saving drugs which are intensely required to run an emergency ward.

The patients brought with broken legs and bones are the worsts sufferers, because there is no surgeon at hospitals to attend such cases and the duty of surgeons are often being carried out by the dispensers. This has added to the problems of the patients.

Similarly, the patients requiring the services of neuro- surgeons are at the razor’s edge. Most of the time, the patients are brought to the KTH with head injuries which needs to be seen by neuro-surgeons, are being referred to either LRH or HMC.

Meanwhile, the condition of the patients deteriorate to the extent that many of them die in the way due to excessive bleeding. They also need CT Scan which is not installed at the KTH.

The matter is made worse by the fact the CT Scan machines at the LRH and HMC remained out of order for most of the time and the patients have to be rushed to the private clinics to carry out the same.

All these hospitals have got imposing buildings but lack staff, equipment and medicines is posing problems for the patients.

For instance, only two dispensers work in one shift at these hospitals, one of which issue OPD chits to the patients while another is supposed to attend the patients with fire arm injuries, put bandages on the bleeding wounds of affectees of the roadside accidents and also do routine dressing of the patients.

“A small child was brought here with severe injuries but there was no catgut at the emergency department to stitch his wound. His poor father was unable to buy it from the market,” said a dispenser at one of the hospitals. According to him, he only put dressing on his wound and sent him back. The number of patients visiting the emergency departments is: KTH, 350; LRH, 1500 and HMC, 100. The emergency departments of the LRH and KTH are overburdened with patients, because they also provide treatment facilities to the routine patients in evening and night shifts.

A casualty medical officer at the LRH said that the number of seriously ill patients was not that much but the routine patients also come to the emergency department which affected its performance.