Swat Valley: hospitals lack basic health facilities for patients

Patients in the Swat valley lack basic health facilities despite tall claims of the government. There is dearth of doctors and drugs at the hospitals in the valley. The patients start coming to hospitals with the break of dawn from the adjacent areas of the valley, with the hope that they might get treatment, but they could be seen screaming outside the hospitals as doctors usually arrive after 12 in the afternoon, and that too for only two or three hours.
The negligence by doctors as well government, sometimes result in deaths of some patients. Especially in Tehsil Barikot and Mangalore, the overall condition of the government-owned hospitals is worst these days. There is a male doctor and a lady doctor in each civil hospital and usually they visit the hospitals from 10:30am to 1pm, just for 3-4 hours. Mostly after 1pm, there is no doctor at all.
Farida Hanam, a patient in Barikot Civil Hospital told Business Recorder, "We are forced to visit the civil hospital as we cannot afford the fee which the doctors charge in private hospitals. There is no proper sitting arrangement at all in the government hospitals for the patients. Most of the time, the patients have to stand in long queue waiting for their turn. You can imagine how a patient suffering from high fever, diarrhea or any other disease manages to stand for long".
She said, "The patients start coming to the hospitals for check-up at 9am and the doctors arrive at around 10:30am and sometimes, even after standing for long in queues, only a few fortunate patients succeed in getting the treatment". Another patient, Swati Khan told this scribe with tears in his eyes, "I am so poor that I cannot afford even the nominal subscription fee of Outdoor Patient Department (OPD) that cost Rs 5 only. So, even being a patient of jaundice, I am standing for the last two hours in this hot weather and thinking whom to blame for my poverty".
There is only one lady doctor in the civil hospital who works for a short duration because she is working on contract basis. When this scribe contacted the lady doctor working at Barikot Hospital she said, "Why should I stay in the hospital for long. I am on contract basis and my contract duration is going to end in the third week of July. The government should arrange a permanent doctor for the hospital but most of the doctors do not like to be employed in this civil hospital because of the lack of basic facilities. For example, there is no arrangement of clean drinking water in the hospital. There is only one bathroom in the hospital, which has no water facility. Loadshedding in this area is unscheduled and mostly, at the time of delivery, we do not have the electricity, no generator and even the emergency light. So, mostly we operate in the light of mobile phones".
It was really very shocking that most of the pregnant women were sitting on ground due to unavailability of benches. There is acute deficiency of the medicines for pregnant and lactating mothers in the hospital. "We cannot do the suzerain in this hospital and refer such cases to the Saidu Sharif, the capital of Swat which is 40 minutes away from Barikot. In most of the cases, women die before reaching Saidu Sharif," the lady doctor said in a very low tone.