The rain had been playing havoc in Karachi for the past few days as it always does, with people stuck up in traffic for hours, wading through knee deep water to reach their destination and spending sleepless nights due to power failure. But the worst happened earlier this week. The news of the death of four patients who were on ventilator at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) during a 15-hour power breakdown and ‘lack of funds’ is shocking to say the least.
The JPMC is not a small hospital in some remote area of the country. It is one of the largest public sector hospitals in the heart of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. Death of patients in the smallest of health care centres in the remotest of areas is disturbing, let alone in a major hospital and that too because of unavailability of fuel to run the standby generators. How pathetic can the situation get?
A person goes to a hospital to get treatment for his ailment and come back in good health. True, that a number of patients on ventilator are in such an advanced stage of ill health that they can’t make it and lose the battle of life. But that is due to health reasons and is acceptable as a stage comes when medicine and doctors’ efforts fail to deliver. But losing the battle of life just because the power supply to the hospital was disrupted and generators were inoperable due to lack of fuel is plain negligence on the part of all concerned.
The hospital administration must have known that the hospital is short on funds even to buy fuel for the generator and could not have been ignorant of the fact that power supply in the city is erratic, especially during rains. They should have been aware of the fact that critically ill patients are admitted to hospital at any given time and that machines vital for saving patients’ lives work on electricity. It was their duty to arrange funds for generator fuel on priority basis no matter what.
The government, especially the Sindh health department, also has the responsibility to provide adequate funds for the smooth functioning of all health facilities. It is the constitutional responsibility of the government to provide health facilities to the people.
The country’s health sector is in a shambles with poor people suffering the most as the rich can ‘buy’ health care at private hospitals. It is the poor who do not have the resources to go to private hospitals and are forced to seek medical attention at state run centres and face shortage of medicine and diagnostic facilities. They consider themselves lucky if they get the medicine they need and a bed if hospitalisation is required. But they cannot be left on the mercy of the elements and negligent authorities who seem to have little regard for human life.
Given the financial state of our government even if one accept that money can’t even be spared for major hospitals one would still wish that it be made available for essential services. A generator that would only support vital systems must be installed so at least life saving equipment could be run to avoid any such incident in the future.
Though it is not the responsibility of the doctors to arrange funds, one expects that the doctors, especially those who work at the intensive care units, would raise their voice to press the authorities to provide adequate funds to hospitals so that they can continue to serve humanity.
The writer is a journalist at Dawn.