KOHAT: Amid continuing sit-ins by the civil society for two years for the provision of category-A facilities here at the KDA teaching hospital, a senior official has confided to Dawn that the trauma and burns services had never been part of the budget of health department and termed the protests and demands futile.

The said hospital was placed in category-A in 2010 as a divisional facility to cater to needs of the people of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The work on the provision of services like head, orthopaedic and brain surgeries had been suspended for several years for unknown reasons. Work on the surgical and medical wards, hostel building and provision of machinery had also hit snags.

The civil society, which staged a protest inside the KDA hospital on the 83rd Friday for the provision of category-A facilities, had demanded early opening of the burns centre constructed for the convenience of the people of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with a cost of Rs20 million in 2011.

Official terms civil society’s protests a futile exercise

Office-bearers of Karwan-i-Amal, under whose aegis the protest was continuing, showed mediapersons the beds and other items rusting under open sky outside the ward. They claimed that the director general, health, had been saying that the burns centre was not part of the hospital whereas it was located on its premises.

Karwan-i-Amal president Saleem Altaf said that the burns centre was established in Kohat for the benefit of the whole southern districts by the last ANP government as the patients had to be taken to Taxila for treatment.

A senior official of the hospital told this correspondent on the condition of anonymity that category-A facilities would remain a dream. Answering a question, he said that burns and trauma centres had never been part of the budget of the health department. He recalled that then MNA Khursheed Begum had inaugurated the burns centre’s building and sanctioned some amount and rest of the work was left for OGDCL which, according to him, had backed out since 2011.

He claimed that a former administrator of the hospital had constructed rooms of the trauma centre against the master plan in which CT scan and MRI machines and laboratory could not be accommodated. It was inaugurated by then health minister Zahir Shah without making any allocation.

Sources said that the provincial government was now of the view that all facilities were available in Peshawar and at CMH Kohat, therefore, there was no need to waste money on the trauma centre.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2019