KARACHI: Beset by serious financial troubles for the past four years, the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) — the third largest public sector hospital in the city — is largely being run on limited philanthropic donations that have caused patients a lot of problems, it emerged during a visit to the health facility on Thursday.

The hospital run by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) has a daily visitor count of over 2,000 patients.

Information gathered from the staff indicated that the 950-bed hospital did not receive even 10 per cent of its budgetary allocation with the result that all units of the hospital, including intensive care, coronary and emergency units, faced an acute shortage of life-saving medicines and other essential items.

Funding constraints, they said, had seriously affected every service of the health facility, which once provided not only costly medicines free but also food to its indoor patients.

‘We have a constant problem of men using our washroom in the female ward’

At present, 50 per cent of the machines at the facility are out of order. They include 15 of the 30 ventilators. The hospital laboratory has the capacity of conducting only basic medical tests.

“From the waste bin-liner and disinfectant items, to the ventilator circuit that has to be changed for every new patient to prevent infection, all basic necessities are arranged either by personal donations or assistance from pharmaceutical companies and philanthropists,” a doctor told Dawn on the condition of anonymity.

These limited donations, he said, were absolutely not sufficient to meet the needs of all patients and often many of them left as soon as they learnt that they had to bear the expense of the treatment, be it of medicines or laboratory tests.

“Still, a large number of patients do get treatment here as the facility has services of senior doctors with all major specialities and sub-specialities, which do not exist in other government health settings,” he said.

‘Stepmotherly treatment’

Some doctors blamed the provincial government for the hospital’s sorry state of affairs and described this treatment as “stepmotherly”. They said that health facilities which directly came under the provincial government were getting “regular funding per their budgetary requirement”.

“I brought my diabetic husband here after being refused treatment in the Qatar Hospital in Orangi Town and the Civil Hospital in Saddar. So far, I have spent Rs15,000 on his treatment in 10 days. The entire amount was borrowed from relatives,” said Sughra, mother of four, sitting beside her husband in a ward.

Several of those attending to patients expressed concern over the hospital’s failure in sharing the treatment cost.

“You can see the poor condition of this ward. Among other things, we have a constant problem of men using our washroom in the female ward,” said a woman tending to her mother.

The situation at the hospital is not just taxing for the patients; doctors believe that they could serve the patients far better if they did not have the worry of arranging critical medicines etc on the back of their minds all the time.

A senior woman doctor said that the hospital, serving as a teaching facility for the Karachi Medical and Dental College, desperately needed a skills laboratory so that fresh medical entrants could hone their skills before applying them on patients.

According to sources, the hospital was in good condition in the days of the local government headed by Mustafa Kamal but its condition started to deteriorate when the LG system was wrapped up.

A major criticism against the hospital, sources said, had been the overwhelming influence of a political party, which, according to them, had led to treatment of selected patients. This situation also discouraged donations on a larger scale.

When contacted, medical superintendent Dr Azfar Moid said the hospital had been facing a serious financial crunch since 2011-2012 and funds being received were meant only for salaries. “We have been pleading our case for a long time and recently heard that the chief minister had approved some funds for the hospital.”

Answering another question, he explained that apart from donations from doctors and philanthropists, the administration also spent half of the hospital’s earning on purchasing essential items required by the facility.

“This is done with the approval of the managing committee. At present, we face a 30-40 per cent shortage in nursing staff. Ninety-three posts for doctors are vacant. The last appointments were made in 2012,” he said.

Dr Moid, however, rejected the impression that the hospital provided treatment to selected patients and said: “Treatment is provided without any discrimination.”

KMC senior director health Mohammad Ali admitted that the ASH was hard hit by lack of funding and explained that the crisis had occurred due to accumulated hospital dues of about Rs250m. “The contractors whose dues were not paid went to court that further complicated the matter. But in recent weeks we have managed to start the process of paying contractors,” he said.

The chief minister, he added, had recently approved Rs170m for KMC health facilities and the process to award tenders for the purchase and repairs of machines and other items would start soon.

“The ASH and the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases will be given priority and the situation will improve in a month or two,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2016