HYDERABAD, Feb 10: The Civil Hospital management has decided to close down its pathology laboratory and merge it into the newly-established Diagnostic and Research Laboratory without seeking permission from the Sindh Health department.

Its closure is going to affect patients of the interior of Sindh financially as rates of the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory are much higher than the hospital’s laboratory.

The Civil Hospital caters to the needs of patients belonging to the working and middle class of the city and far-flung areas of Sindh.

The Diagnostic and Research Laboratory, sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology, was established mainly for research. It is conducting routine tests and investigations, apparently aimed at closing the hospital’s laboratory and applying its own tariff of tests on poor patients.

The rates charged by the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory are much higher than those charged by the hospital’s laboratory.

The patients have been told that the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory would not conduct any test free of cost as per the decision of the Hospital Management Committee. For instance, the existing hospital’s laboratory conducts a bone marrow test free of cost, while the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory charges Rsl75 for it. The rates for outdoor patients are even higher.

Some doctors put the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory’s earnings close to Rsl00 million.

While the hospital laboratory is not closed as yet, there is tremendous pressure from the professors to refer the indoor patients to the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory for tests and investigations, a doctor told this correspondent requesting anonymity.

After the laboratory’s closure, indoor patients will have no option but to get tests conducted at the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory at exorbitant rates.

The Hospital Management Committee claims that the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory’s tests match the standard of the Aga Khan Hospital’s laboratories. However, nobody knows what is the yardstick to compare the results of the Diagnostic and Research Laboratory with those of the Aga Khan’s.

Why alone tests are being compared with the standard of the Aga Khan Laboray and why not the level of education, the university and services of the Aga Khan Hospital?

The source said that hospital affairs are handled by the Hospital Management Board or the Patients Welfare Society and since the civil hospital is a provincial subject, the LUMHS has no right to interfere in its affairs.

In Karachi, the Sindh Medical College and the Jinnah Post-Graduates Medical Centre are functioning as separate entities without interfering in each other’s working.

The Hospital Management Board consisting of citizens and the Patients Welfare Society are not consulted for such an important decision.

VC LUMHS: The vice chancellor of the LUMHS, Jan Mohammad Memon, defended the proposed closure of the pathology laboratory saying the patients would get better and latest facilities of medical tests instead of conventional methods being applied in the hospital’s laboratory.

He told this correspondent that “some vested interests were exploiting the issue”.