KOHAT: The Liaquat Memorial Hospital, which has been turned into women and children hospital, has been facing shortage of medical staff after some of its doctors left their jobs and joined the local medical college.

So far, three lady doctors, two each surgeons, medical officers, eye specialists and ENT specialists, and one each psychiatrist, radiologist and pathologist had left the hospital and taken up a teaching job at the Kohat Institute of Medical Sciences.

In principle, wherever a medical college is established the government appoints new staff for it, but in case of Kohat doctors and technicians left the hospital and joined the medical college.

Dr Rauf Paracha told mediapersons that currently 14 doctors were working against 21 sanctioned posts and 25 nurses against 40 approved seats in the hospital. He said that two gynaecologists and 10 dispensers were also required in the LMH, located in the city centre.

Sources said that new doctors and technical staff had not been posted to the hospital for the past 15 years and the machinery at LMH, constructed in 1952, and the building had completed their life span.

Dr Paracha also showed the cracks which had appeared in the structure of LMH and the leaking roof.

During the previous ANP-led government its MNA Pir Dilwar Shah had announced that Rs190 million had been allocated for the provision of CT scan, trauma centre, new X-ray facility and MRI machine, but not a single work was done during his five-year tenure.

The generator donated by the UN Population Fund was rusting unutilised for the past several years because the hospital had no funds for its diesel. Besides, the KDA divisional hospital was declared as a teaching hospital after establishment of the medical college by the previous government in 2011, but it looked like a rural health centre.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2015

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