DR Furqanul Haq, a Covid-19 patient, died as he was shuttled in the ambulance from hospital to hospital and could not get a bed and ventilator. This is not a time to blame or defend the government.

The need is to come up with standard operating procedures for situations like this in future. It is said that some hospitals refused to admit Dr Furqan because he did not have a certificate of positive Covid-19 test. Others refused on the pretext that a bed/ventilator was not available. Strangely, authorities not only acknowledge but insist that the number of available beds and ventilators far exceeds the number of people who need these facilities at this time.

Some people blamed Dr Furqan, claiming that he avoided admission to the hospital a few days earlier because he did not wish to be stigmatised. That may not be a good reason to avoid hospitalisation but it is widely accepted and often recommended that in the early stages, the patient can stay home and hospitalise only when the symptoms take a serious turn.

So if he refused to be hospitalised, even for a wrong reason, he should have been given the required medical treatment, once needed. The fact, however, is that Dr Furqan died as the ambulance took him from hospital to hospital while none of the hospitals allowed him in and nowhere did the doctors come to see his condition.

In my opinion, as soon as a patient is tested positive his/her result should be fed into a central computer along with the CNIC. As soon as the test results are received, the patient should be contacted and advised, based on a phone interview, if home isolation is feasible or the patient should proceed to a hospital. The district health department should despatch ambulance to the patient’s address if hospitalisation is deemed necessary.

Furthermore, if a patient is initially in self-quarantine but later his condition becomes serious, the patient/family should be able to dial a simple, publicised phone number to call for an ambulance, which should know exactly which nearby hospital has facilities available for this patient.

Syed Arif Kazmi

Karachi

(2)

THE circumstances under which the late Dr Furqanul Haq, a former physician at the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases, died are pathetic and inhuman.

A doctor is considered a messiah and is always at the bedside of even a dying patient. Doctors take the Hippocratic oath. If firefighters are afraid of the sparks, then who will fight fire? Therefore training is important for safety first.

As a matter of fact, people who are working in hazardous jobs, like doctors, firefighters, police, and skilled people working in high-rise buildings without safety gear must be given the benefit of life insurance. This is so that the family does not face an economic problem.

I would like to point out all commercial pilots have life insurance till they retire. The same can be replicated in the case of the people performing risky jobs.

M. Shafique Ahmed

Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2020