PESHAWAR, Jan 25: Inadequate facilities at public sector hospitals have added to the problems of people, especially of patients suffering from mental disorders.

A psychiatrist of a city hospital told Dawn on Friday: “About 14 per cent of the Pakistani people are suffering from one kind of mental ailment or the other, but the facilities to treat them are next to zero.”

According to him, only three districts Mardan, Swat and Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP have got the services of psychiatrists. Though each of the 24 districts in the Frontier province had got the services of cardiologists, dermatologists, physicians, surgeons; all the psychiatric patients except of the three districts have to visit the city’s hospitals for the treatment. While on the other hand about 10 qualified psychiatrists in the province are awaiting posting.

At present only four psychiatrists are working in the city hospitals: one at Lady Reading Hospital; three at Khyber Teaching Hospital; one at Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) and one at the Government Mental Hospital. But the HMC has no psychiatric ward, and the OPD for mentally-ill patients is conducted by a doctor, who is posted somewhere else.

The Government Mental Hospital, since its inception in 1854, has been offering treatment to the patients from across the province, besides catering to the medical needs of a large number of the Afghan refugees.

According to statistics provided to Dawn, the number of mentally-ill people is continuously increasing: 20,000 patients visited the hospital in 1997, 25,000 in 1998, 28,000 in 1999, 30,000 in 2001 and 33,179 in year 2002.

The hospital’s financial position started worsening five years ago when the medicine budget was cut from Rs4.2million to Rs2million.

This reduction also affected the services provided to 98 per cent of the patients who

come from poor families, and to whom the mental hospital is supposed to provide medicines and other healthcare facilities free of cost.

The patients are entitled to get food and clothing, but owing to the cut in budget, the hospital is now lacking facilities..