KOHAT, Sept 28: Women and Children Hospital, Kohat desperately needs new building and government funding for better patient care.

The hospital earlier known as Liaquat Memorial Hospital was opened in 1951 and has been in the same building since. Most of its affairs are managed by the funds provided by United Nations Population Fund and governmental and non-governmental welfare organisations.

UNFPA bears the expenditure of the hospital’s operation theatre, while its emergency ward is run on public donations coupled with funding diverted from Divisional Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital, Kohat.

The DHQ hospital’s building is in place but has been closed for over a decade overburdening Women and Children Hospital, which is daily visited by thousands of people from Kohat city and adjoining areas, including Afghan refugees and internally displaced persons.

The government had stopped funding the hospital’s emergency ward a few years ago before shifting its staff to KDA Divisional Headquarters Hospital.

Visitors to the ward complained about toilet closure and said they were asked by the administration to go out of the hospital for defecation and urination.

Bashir Khan, a Jarma resident, said no doctor visited his ailing mother in the emergency ward at night and that she was asked by a nurse to use public toilets outside the hospital.

Deputy superintendent of the hospital Dr Hussain Jan told Dawn that the emergency ward’s monthly expenditure totaled over seven million rupees and was managed by the people’s donations.

He said the commissioner and deputy commissioner’s offices supplied fuel for power generators placed in the emergency ward.