Daily Times

LARKANA: The 24-bed Diabetic Foot Ward of the Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), the hospital with largest tertiary services in rural Sindh, has been closed for the last five months on the directions of former Sindh Health Secretary Dr Fazalullah Pechuho.

Reportedly, the situation has worsened as woes of ailing patients have multiplied since April 30, 2018.

Dr Pechuho had decided to establish the ward in the Medicine department of the hospital, but this decision could not be implemented.

The ward was established in the Orthopedics Surgery department in 1985, however it started to treat patients suffering from the deadly gangrene disease properly in 1989.

Chronic diabetic patients were treated in the ward who suffered an injury in foot, leg or hand.

They required constant dressing after amputation and control of blood sugar level which was impossible in the Ortho Ward.

Orthopedics Surgery department head Prof Jagdesh Kumar on Tuesday told the media that a meeting was held under health secretary and a former vice chancellor of Benazir Bhutto Medical University (BBMU), who unanimously decided that patients would be admitted in the medical unit and only shifted to the Ortho Ward for surgery.

Medical Unit-1 head Prof Hakim Ali Abro said that healthcare services could not be provided effectively due to lack of doctors in the hospital.

CMCH MS Dr Ali Gohar Dahri said that neither BBMU nor Chandka Medical College (CMC) has post-graduate specialist doctors for diabetes.

He said diabetic patients were being examined at the diabetic OPD at Medical Unit-1; however such patients could not be admitted there.

Dr Jahangir Awan said that the OPD has been treating patients diagnosed with diabetes free of cost.

He said that Diabetic Foot Ward could not be established due to lack of doctors and paramedics.

It was the only ward of its kind in upper Sindh, and poor patients from Balochistan and 12 other districts were also treated there.

Meanwhile, patients appealed to the concerned authorities to take notice of the matter and resolve it on the priority basis.

SHC Bar Association refutes construction of dams on Indus River

The Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA) on Wednesday organised a demonstration against construction of the Kalabagh Dam without the consent of Sindh and the federal government’s proposal to grant Pakistani nationality to Afghan refugees and Bengali, Burmese and other immigrants.

Reportedly, the rally was initiated from the district court and culiminated at Jinnah Bagh roundabout where protesting lawyers chanted full-throat slogans in favour of their demands.

Lawyers from 14 districts of Sindh’s Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah divisions are members of SHCBA.

The lawyers including Asif Ali Abdul Razak Soomro, Ali Nawaz Ghangro, Rafique Ahmed Abro, Nazir Hussain Chandio and others denounced construction of dams on the Indus River and asserted that the dams would ruin the economy and agriculture of Sindh and the Indus Delta will be vanished with sea intrusion.

They further termed the ongoing sequence of events in the country as ‘a violation of rights of people of Sindh’.

Moreover, they said that water scarcity had already devastated agriculture while growers had been pushed to the brink of famine.

“Growers could not sow paddy crops this year and the results would be devastating due to water scarcity,” they added.

“We will never allow construction of dams on the Indus River and besides three provincial assemblies had rejected it,” they maintained.

They also refuted Prime Minister Imran Khan’s initiative to grant citizenship to Bengalis, Burmese, Afghans and other immigrants, and termed it as ‘a conspiracy against Sindhi people to convert them into minority.’

They appealed to the federal government to put an immediate halt on such initiatives or otherwise, massive protests could be initiated across the country.

Published in Daily Times, September 20^th 2018.