HYDERABAD, April 13 Government-run hospitals across the province remain plagued by callous staff, lack of necessary equipment and diagnostic laboratories and perennial shortage of life-saving drugs, which badly retard their ability to respond to emergencies and run counter to “Save lives, make hospitals safe in emergencies”, theme of this year's World Health Day.

World Health Day 2009 focuses on safety of health facilities and readiness of health officials and workers who treat people affected by emergencies.

WHO believes that health centres and staff are critical lifelines for vulnerable people in disasters and often, already fragile health systems are unable to keep functioning through a disaster.

In the event of an emergency in Hyderabad or in any other district of the province, except Karachi, level of preparedness of health officials remains not only poor but questionable.

A 30-year-old woman died of diarrhoea in Hyderabad civil hospital, a tertiary level hospital, which reflects the degree of commitment, with which the doctors and paramedics perform their duties.

Hefty funds need to be injected into health infrastructure in Sindh to make each district level hospital capable of handling emergencies.

The doctors' response even in tertiary hospitals leaves much to be desired and people's lack of confidence in doctors of government hospitals often leads to troubles. The district level health facilities await upgradation and according to Sindh's director general of health services facilities like mortuaries, cold storages, laboratories, operation theatres of orthopaedics and gynaecological surgeries are being upgraded in 11 hospitals in the first phase.

The remaining 12 hospitals will have to make do with whatever facilities they have. “You will see each and everything in these 11 hospitals as soon as work begins in the current fiscal year,” DG Dr Sattar Korai said.

In the second phase the government would go for upgrading the remaining hospitals and obviously nothing could be done in one go, he argued.

Hardly any hospital except those in Karachi and Hyderabad has burns ward to take care of burns victims. Even those admitted to the Hyderabad's so-called burns ward are often shifted to Karachi if the victim has first or second degree wounds.

Besides inadequate staff the ward has only one operation theatre. The existing ward is working in private wards and more than one patients are kept in one room. “Patients are not segregated for want of space which raises chances of infection that may prove fatal,” said a doctor.

Burns victims with more than 50 per cent wounds are shifted to Karachi but it is always a bitter pill for the patients' families who are unwilling to shift them for want of money.

The hospitals of the rural Sindh treat only patients with superficial injuries or refer the serious ones to Hyderabad.

The other most important issue of healthcare involves pathological investigations in laboratories.

The hospitals use manual methods of pathological investigations in the absence of auto analyzers, which usually leads to erroneous results.

Mortuaries are poorly equipped and existing mortuaries can keep only one body at a time while cold storages are non-existent. Even an air conditioner at the Hyderabad civil hospital's mortuary is not working properly.

Investigations revealed that posts for neurology physician or surgeon in district level hospitals remain vacant though their presence is more important in case of fatal road accidents when people mostly suffer head injuries.

According to a doctor at the Jamshoro branch of the civil hospital, it is quite disgusting that university administration does not supply water to the hospital round the clock.

“It's simply a rationing of water that we get in our OTs and wards and without water you can well imagine condition of OTs,” he said.

The hospital administration has to make several requests for water to LUMHS administration where lush green lawns and plants get uninterrupted supply of water.

The state of affairs at the rural health centres and basic health units is more pathetic where a general practitioner takes care of everything.

The Hyderabad civil hospital's paediatrics ward has a “nursery without nurses” which makes it pretty useless as far as babies' care is concerned. There is no trained staff and operation theatre needs to be equipped with necessary facilities.

The existing equipment remains inadequate and un-sterilized, raising fears of infections.

Referral system in the hospitals in the interior of Sindh needs to be strengthened where babies are referred when they have dim chances of survival. The hospitals usually do not have kidney dialysis facilities.