CHK presents woeful conditions

The lack of proper counters at Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), patients who are visited in emergency center have to wait for long hours to get enrolled at the hospital, a brief visit of the city's largest public sector hospital revealed on Monday. Moreover, the miseries of the patients are increased when they wait for day long to get the prescribed medicine.
The visiting patients were seen queuing up for hours at the pharmacy of the hospital, which had come for obtaining medicines prescribed by doctors. CHK, where more than 4,000 patients visited daily basis suffered when they were not be able to get medicines prescribed by the doctors from hospital's pharmacy. A patient told Business Recorder that they are not getting medicines from the pharmacy despite standing in the long queue for hours.
Another patient, Mohammed Ikhlaq, who has diabetes, said that he has been visiting pharmacy for the last five days but could not manage to get medicine preescribed by doctor of the CHK "Whenever, I approached the pharmacist after waiting for hours for getting prescribed medicine, he asked me to come next day. I could not get medicines despite passing five days", anguished Ikhlaq told.
In this regard, when Assistant Medical Superintendent (AMS) and In-charge OPD Civil Hospital Dr Shakeel Malik contacted he said that due to shortage of medicines some patients could not be facilitated with medicines. He said that some 4,000 patients visited CHK daily. It is very difficult to manage the medicines for all patients due to shortage of resources.
Dr Shakeel was of the view that hospital administration is endeavouring to facilitate all visiting patients. He added that whoever could not get prescribed medicines on very same day than patients were asked to visit pharmacy next day. He alleged that some fake patients who get "parchi" by using unfair means from hospital got medicines from the pharmacy and subsequently sells to the private medical stores. The steps are being taken to counter forgers in order to facilitate the genuine patients, he added.
According to the sources, medicines were also being stolen from Civil Hospital. They said patients were gave only cheap medicines; however, they were asked to buy costly injections, capsules and tablets from the private stores. They said the administrations of these hospitals were fully aware about the issue but they did not pay any heed due to their own vested interests. They said mostly paramedics including dispensers; technicians and storekeepers are involved in the theft of medicines. However, in some cases doctors were also found involved in this crime, they added.