KARACHI, June 24: Government hospitals in the entire city have a very small number of women MLOs (medico-legal officers) because of which women victims of crime, like torture, rape, etc., suffer a lot.

Such victims have to wait for their turn usually for hours as most of the hospitals have either no women MLOs or an insufficient number. Most often, many of the women victims are referred to other hospitals for the purpose of legal procedures in the case.

The Civil Hospital and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital have three and a sanctioned strength of three women MLOs whereas the Jinnah Post-graduate Medical Centre (JPMC) has two. However, the burden at all these three major hospitals makes it impossible for the MLOs to entertain all the cases within their duty hours.

"We can avail no off days... we have to rush to the place of duty at any time a woman victim is brought to the hospital... even during the night hours," said one of the women MLOs.

A senior doctor at the civil hospital remarked that medico-legal section appeared to be the most neglected sphere which was subjected to step-motherly treatment by health department.

In the wake of Hyderi mosque tragedy, which had prompted the competent authorities to declare an emergency at the hospital, some sort of cosmetic measure were taken under which 10 lady doctors had been transferred from the Health Service School to the casualty ward of the civil hospital.

However, the health department did not move to favour repeated requests for the posting of a few more female officers in the medico-legal sections of the three hospital.

Stressing on prompt attention to cases, a senior doctor gave the example of a rape case of June 22 and said that the incident had taken place at about 10:00 in the morning in the limits of Quaidabad police.

The police brought her to the JPMC at about 7:45 in the evening and it was necessary to examine the victim without wasting more time because in rape cases, time held prime importance to ensure that no evidence was washed away.

However, due to the non-availability of a woman MLO, the victim had to be referred to the civil hospital. The doctor said that the woman MLO on duty there, however, refused to entertain a case referred to the hospital from the JPMC. Eventually, he added, the in-charge of the CHK medico-legal section had to rush to the hospital from here residence to examine the victim.

"It was a positive case and any further delay could have destroyed the evidence," another medical officer observed. Since the issuance of a notification as per an order of the apex court that women MLOs would be handling the cases of examining a woman victim of rape or a woman patient with internal injury or a woman's body meant for postmortem, the problem of the shortage of women MLOs has aggravated.

Sources pointed out that although the court's order was in very much in public interest, the strength of women MLOs available at government hospitals appeared to be quite insufficient to handle the big number of cases routinely reported there every day.

To cope with the situation, the health department had once directed the hospital administrations that male officer could be allowed to examine a woman victim but the examination be confined to the exposed portions.

The sources put the figure of four as the minimum requirement of women MLOs at every major government hospital, making it 36 as the total strength for nine such facilities - CHK, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, JPMC, Qatar Hospital Orangi, Government Hospital Korangi, Lyari General Hospital, Sindh Government Hospital Liaquatabad, Government Hospital New Karachi and Government Hospital Saudabad.

While only three of them - CHK, JPMC and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital - provide emergency facilities, lady doctors at all the nine hospital usually appear unwilling to perform as MLO citing either insecurity or lack of appropriate facilities.