LARKANA, Dec 10: The Chandka Medical College Hospital is at the bottom of the Sindh Zakat Council’s list of Zakat recipients as it receives the least among all teaching hospitals despite being a major health institution of upper Sindh, which also caters to patients from parts of Balochistan and Punjab.

CMCH Deputy Medical Superintendent Dr Captain Ghulam Ali Hulio who manages the hospital’s Zakat funds told Dawn that MS Prof Dr Afsar Bhutto had written a letter to the chairman of the Sindh Zakat Council on Nov 29, requesting him to enhance annual Zakat allocation for CMCH from Rs3.5 million to at least Rs20 million for the sake of the poor, destitute and deserving patients.

He said the hospital’s demand for a raise in the funds was justified in view of a higher allocation of funds for the Civil Hospital Karachi, Liaquat University of Health Management Sciences, Jamshoro, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi and People’s Medical College Hospital, Nawabshah.

He said the 1,352-bed CMCH received only Rs3.5 million while 1,798-bed Civil Hospital Karachi got Rs10 million, LUMHS (1,410 beds) Rs7 million, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (1,185 beds) Rs10 million, People’s Medical College Hospital (870 beds) Rs10 million and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (950 beds) Rs10 million.

The break-up of funds showed a patient on a bed in the Civil Hospital Karachi received Rs15.23 per day, LUMHS Rs13.60, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre Rs346.80, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital Rs288.39, People’s Medical College Hospital Rs15.74 and CMCH got only Rs7.09 per day for a patient on a bed from Zakat funds, said the MS’s letter.

Dr Hulio said the CMCH being a major health institution with 1,352 beds covered 15 districts and parts of Balochistan and Punjab but it received a meagre Rs3.5 million in two instalments in a year.

He said quoting from the letter that patients had to wait for vacant beds in the indoor department while the number of patients in the out-patient department kept rising.

The construction of the Larkana-Khairpur bridge over the Indus river had further added to overcrowding in the hospital because those patients from Khairpur who previously used to go to Nawabshah, Hyderabad and Jamshoro could now easily arrive at the CMCH in time, said the letter.

At present 4,500 patients reported to the OPDs every day while between 500 and 600 visited the casualty department.

The hospital mostly catered to the poor population who had suffered unprecedented destruction and suffering wrought by heavy floods and rains in 2010, 2011 and 2012, he said.

The number of patients living below poverty line as well as bed occupancy were compelling factors to sympathetically consider the request of a rise in Zakat allocations, said the letter.

The number of patients reporting at the hospital was on a steady rise. In 2009, total number of patients reporting in OPDs and casualty department was 602,477 which rose to 611,140 in 2012, Dr Hulio said. He said the number of Zakat beneficiaries was 2,409 in 2009-10, 2,731 in 2010-11 and 2,095 in 2011-12 which continued to rise.