PESHAWAR, Aug 22: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government has issued directives to all public sector hospitals to conduct ECG and ultrasound of women patients by female staff.
An official of the health department said that the directives were likely to be proved a futile exercise as only one woman ECG technician was available across the province.
Last week the NWFP health department had issued directives to the administration of all hospitals in the province, asking them to ensure conducting electrocardiography (ECG) and ultrasound of women patients by the female technicians.
Citing the NWFP Assembly Resolution of May 8, 2003, it said that it was mandatory for all the hospital administrators to ensure that the ECG and ultrasound of the patients was done by the female staff in line with the teachings of Islam and local traditions.
The health department has asked the management of all public sector hospitals to comply with the government directives, immediately.
Significantly, an official said there was only one woman ECG technician at the Khyber Teaching Hospital, who performed duty in the morning shift while it were the men technicians who deal with ECG equipments in the entire province.
More interestingly, there is no woman ultrasound specialist in the public sector hospitals of the province. The only female qualified ultrasonographist of the province had left for Saudi Arabia, it is learnt.
“The government has issued the directives without doing its home work and looking at the ground realities. It is just playing to the gallery,” said an ultrasound specialist at the Lady Reading Hospital.
According to him, they perform about 100 ultrasound of the patients on daily-basis and if the male doctors were stopped from carrying out the ultrasound of the female patients, then, where would the women go?
Similarly, at all the district headquarters hospitals, the female patients are being checked up by the male doctors for ultrasound. Given the local traditions, even the women patients themselves wish to be examined by the lady doctors, but the non-availability of lady doctors had left them with no option but to be examined by the male doctors.
The so-called think-tanks of the MMA government has not gone through the official record to see if the female staff for these tests are available, a doctor said.
The shortage of female technicians in other fields is not merely confined to ECG and ultrasound. For instance, there is no female anaesthesia technician, operation theatre and dispenser throughout the province. The female patients are being operated upon in the presence of all male staff, where most of the female patients are required to be anaesthetised and sometimes undressed before operating on them, when required.
All the female patients are being operated upon for haemorrhoids or piles by male surgeons, because there are only two female general surgeons in the whole province. Even, they are assisted by male staff at the operation theatres.
Likewise, the hospitals have yet to acquire the services of female X-ray, laboratory and physiotherapy technicians. Male dispensers are putting dressings over the wounds of the female patients in surgical and orthopaedic wards of the hospitals, owing to lack of female staff.
The city hospitals have got the services of nurses, but they are trained only in looking after the patients in wards. They just administer drips and injections and record temperatures of the patients. ECG being the initial test of the patient suspected of cardiac problems, needs to be done by trained technicians.
