LAHORE: A plethora of complaints about the [overburdened] pathology lab of Multan’s Nishtar Medical Hospital has exposed slackness in provision of better diagnostic facilities to patients of south Punjab during ‘peak time’ of the Covid-19.

It’s the sole public sector laboratory which is catering to the needs of suspected and confirmed patients of the deadly virus in the entire south Punjab, the region of Chief Minister Usman Buzdar.

It merits mentioning that the south Punjab is housing the largest number of pilgrims who came from Iran, members of Tableeghi Jamaat and citizens hit by the pandemic.

The complaints are about the authenticity/credibility of the coronavirus-related test reports, ‘inordinate’ delay in issuing results, ‘carelessness’, mismanagement in maintaining record and the [alleged] rude behaviour of the lab staff.

The most serious issue that generated a high alert at the institute is refusal to get samples of the Covid-19 for PCR testing and the ‘inordinate’ delay in preparing or issuing reports to patients who died of coronavirus.

Sole public sector lab in entire region is overburdened

In the absence of the reports, families of the patients are facing a great deal of inconvenience in getting body from the hospital’s management [for burial].

In some cases, they took many days to issue report of the dead person as a result duty doctors were at the risk of [possible] attack by relatives of the deceased.

The above-mentioned dismal picture of the lab was portrayed in an official correspondence between the institute’s senior medics.

A deputy medical superintendent, Dr Mohammad Zahid, took up the issue with the senior management saying the ‘careless’ attitude on the part of the lab staff was worrisome.

He said the pathology department of Nishtar Hospital has no proper plan for [Covid-19] reports.

“Most of the time the bodies remained in isolation ward for two to three days due to pending test reports,” he said.

He said [in some cases] families raised a hue and cry in the institute to get the body back due to delay in releasing reports.

“Whenever I called the pathology department for reports, their response was casual and the staff even didn’t know whether the sample of the deceased is in process or not,” the DMS said.

He also pointed out ‘blunders’ on the part of the lab officials regarding credibility of reports saying the record of the samples was not being maintained properly.

“Even they were not mentioning the time of the test sample in the register. Whenever I talked to the lab officials, they had no list/record of samples of patients,” he said.

He added on demanding the record [officially], the lab officials failed in providing the test reports.

“They never provided authentic information about test reports. Instead, they misguided us about the reporting time for the awaited results,” the official pointed out in the correspondence.

He asked the higher authorities to take notice of the complaints.

Interestingly, the Nishtar’s medical superintendent also endorsed the ‘blunders’ raised by the DMS questioning the credibility of test reports.

A copy of the correspondence between the senior officials is available with Dawn.

The official version of the Nishtar Medical University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mustafa Kamal Pasha has put all responsibility on the higher authorities for providing one lab in the entire region.

Talking to Dawn, he said: “Initially we would send samples to Islamabad or Lahore. Since we started a PCR machine in our institute all the tests from south Punjab were diverted to Nishtar. Owing to sudden rush and huge number of samples it was not possible to do tests in a short period.”

“[In one go] we can do a maximum of 96 tests and it takes approximately 10 to 12 hours to complete a test of one group. Generally, the people do not have the idea that this test takes a lot of time. Even if we work for 24 hours we cannot do more than 180 tests. We received a large number of tests which includes from all the districts of south Punjab and from the mosques where we had huge groups of Tableeghi Jamaat all waiting for their results,” said Mr Pasha.

He complained that the district administrations started telephoning the MS to do tests urgently.

“We have informed them repeatedly that it is beyond our capacity and we are doing [testing] at the earliest,” he said.

Later, the flights added to the waiting list of the pathology lab, he said.

“We repaired one of our old machines and doubled the testing capacity,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2020