KARACHI: City Mayor Barrister Murtaza Wahab has said the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) wants to improve its hospitals, but this cannot be achieved without implementing the process of rewards and penalties.

Hospital heads and other officers who did not improve performance would no longer be tolerated, he added. Dr Ghulam Abbas, medical superintendent (MS) of Sarfraz Rafiqee Shaheed Hospital, has been suspended for being absent from duty.

He was presiding over a meeting of the KMC medical services department, attended by Municipal Commissioner SM Afzal Zaidi, medical services senior director and medical superintendents of all the KMC hospitals.

He said medical superintendents in all the hospitals running under the KMC were required to submit a report within a week as to how many citizens they had treated during the past year. Strict action would be taken against the officers providing incorrect figures, he warned.

Suspends MS of Sarfraz Rafiqee Shaheed Hospital

Wahab said the performance of all major hospitals under the KMC was not satisfactory, therefore all MSs should inform in writing that how many officers and other staff members were on duty at their hospitals. Service books and personnel files of all the doctors, paramedical staff and employees should be available in hospitals, he said.

All the doctors working in those health facilities should take an oath in writing within a week that they were not serving or practicing elsewhere, and that oath should be submitted in the mayor’s secretariat, he said. All the heads should improve the performance of their hospitals so that standardised medical services could be provided to patients. Immediate arrangements should also be made for cleanliness in the hospitals and availability of necessary medicines and equipment must be ensured, he said.

He said the KMC hospitals were a very cost-effective means of providing medical facilities to citizens, but that objective would only be achieved when the performance of those institutions improved and patients were satisfied with their treatment. In that regard, no delay or negligence would be tolerated, and those responsible, including superintendents and other officers, would face disciplinary action, he warned.

Wahab emphasised that all the instructions given must be implemented without delay. The performance of all the KMC hospitals would be reviewed and monitored continuously so that those facilities could be improved, he said.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2024