RECENTLY, around 2am, I had to rush a patient to the emergency ward of People’s University of Medical and Health Sciences (PUMHS) in Nawabshah. The patient was suffering from a severe allergic reaction; his face had turned red, and breathing was laboured.

Expecting immediate medical attention, I was surprised when the doctor on duty, without a second thought, handed me a prescription for an injection and a syringe, asking me to buy them myself. I hurried out of the hospital, wondering if I would even find a functional medical store in the dead of the night.

Luckily, the pharmacy outside the hospital was open. I bought the injection and rushed back, but I kept thinking what might have been the case had that store not been functional. What if the patient’s condition had worsened while I was away? This was not just an inconvenience; it was a blatant failure of the healthcare system.

And the irony of it all is that the hospital is the largest government medical facility in Nawabshah, which, in turn, happens to be the hometown of the sitting president of Pakistan and the health minister of Sindh.

Government hospitals should not just be grand buildings with impressive signboards; they should be centres of care, compassion and cure.

The people of Sindh do not need spe-eches. They need medicines, functioning hospitals, and a proper system that does not abandon them in their time of need.

Iftikhar Shaikh
Hyderabad

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2025