KHYBER: Key parts of three modern machines at the District Headquarters Hospital, Landi Kotal, are ‘missing’, it was learnt on Saturday.

Sources in the hospital told Dawn that the provincial directorate of health services had provided Electroencephalography (EEG), Nerve Conduction Study (NCS) and Electromyography (EMG) machines to the hospital in 2013 to help improve healthcare delivery.

The sources said that the machines had been kept in the storeroom for the last 13 years for unknown reasons.

They said that the hospital’s medical superintendent, Dr Jamil Ahmad, made two dialysis machines operational recently to facilitate kidney patients needing dialysis.

The medical officer and the technical staff were, however, taken aback when they found some vital parts missing from EEG, NCS and EMG machines a few days ago, the sources said.

The sources claimed that a previous medical superintendent of the hospital had hushed up the matter after constituting an enquiry committee to expose the culprits behind the alleged stealing of machine parts, rendering the equipment useless.

The inquiry committee, it was learnt, had instead advised the hospital management to purchase the ‘missing’ parts from the market, which would cost the hospital approximately Rs2.5 million.

The sources said that the ‘missing or stolen’ parts included electronic cameras, monitors and CPUs, besides software licenses. They said that EEG was used to ascertain the electrical activities of the brain to help diagnose fits of epilepsy, sudden loss of senses, and other related neurological diseases.

When contacted, MS Dr Jamil Ahmad said efforts were underway to hire expert technical staff to make the machines operational, adding that new parts had been procured for the three machines.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2026