LARKANA: Highly expensive and sensitive equipment is sitting in the newly-built 45-bed state-of-the-art intensive care unit at Chandka Medical College Hospital’s city block, and gathering rust for past eight months only for want of a dedicated power supply connection.

The CMCH’s medical superintendent, Dr Niaz Dahar, sought in a letter to the Sukkur Electric Power Company on July 7 installation of a 360kV transformer to run the ICU. The current infrastructure is inadequate to support the critical care service to be offered by the ICU, which also houses eight-bed space exclusively for the high dependency unit (HDU). The installation of a dedicated transformer was crucial to ensure uninterrupted power supply, said hospital sources.

A 100kV pole-mounted transformer (PMT) was brought to the ICU premises but it had not been connected with the unit. The contractor had finished the renovation work but the health department had not yet taken over the premises and made it functional for the purpose it had been built, they said.

The highly sensitive equipment include; 20 ventilators, electronic devices for pathology tests, auto-beds and floor mounted air conditioners (chillers) in addition to furniture and fixtures, which were lying unattended in different rooms, gathering dust.

Only a watchman had been deputed to look after this gigantic and costly infrastructure and it was feared the warranty of the sophisticated equipment worth millions of rupees might expire before the devices were put to use.

The MS requested the Sepco officials to expedite work on the transformer’s installation as further delay might prove harmful for the costly machines, which had been made available under a World Bank-funded project, said the sources.

“We are not getting any appropriate response from the Sepco. Hence, the matter has been conveyed to secretary of health and vice chancellor of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University, who is also chairperson of the Board of Directors of the hospital, but in vain. Last month, the secretary of health after visiting the non-functional ICU discussed the issue with the hospital managers and the officials concerned, said the sources.

A team constituted on March 27, 2024, which comprised the MS (convener), CMC principal Prof Dr Zamir Ahmed Soomro (team head), Prof Hakim Ali Abro (medicine) and Prof Ahmeduddin Soomro (anesthesia), visited the ICU on April 1, and made certain proposals regarding modifications in the ICU.

The team proposed to rename the ICU as ICU Complex CMCH for patients of all disciplines and advised recruiting 18 doctors for ICU and HDU, three ophthalmologists, three radiologists, 35 nursing staff, technicians along with three ICU managers, three IT people, three record keepers, one bio-engineer, 12 ward boys, six midwives, 12 housekeeping staff, 12 security staff and one electrician.

A former MS of the CMCH privy to the issue disclosed that the CMCH lacked an entire Human Resources portion for the ICU and the government was required to immediately arrange facilities for the patients. Without a Schedule of New Expenditure (SNE) how it would be possible to run such a large ICU, he wondered.

Another source in the hospital said that the department of health intended to outsource the newly-built ICU and HDU unit. Whether the government ran the facility itself or outsourced it, the delay was damaging the highly sensitive and costly equipment as it was a real possibility that the ‘warranty’ of the equipment might expire soon, said a source linked to the project on condition of anonymity.

The ventilators required yearly calibration and rise in temperature in the area and such factors could have a negative impact on them, said the sources. Already certain units of pediatrics, medicine, diabetes, orthopedics and gynecology in the administrative control of CMCH were being run without an SNE, said the sources.

Currently, the CMCH had a five-bed ICU established in an old building in CMCH used for COVID-19 quarantine. Due to a small number of beds, many patients in need of the ICU were routinely turned away, said the sources. “We face shortage of medicines in the ICU,” said a doctor at the ICU.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2024