Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The malfunctioning of the pathological laboratory of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) is creating a lot of problems for the patients as medical experts consider its test results unreliable.

Daily Times learnt on Thursday that the government had been allocating millions of rupees funds annually for its overhauling but the administration despite consuming these funds allocated for the development, is spending the same on other unnecessary projects, resulting in the pathology lab now providing unsatisfactory results , the source said.

According to statistics available with this scribe, more than four thousands patients approach this lab on a daily basis for their medical tests on the direction of the medical practitioners but now the lab results are being turned down by the doctors because of their unreliability.

As an example, patients Gul Zeb and Shabana Bibi belong to s poor family visited the PIMS urology department two days ago for treatment and the doctor advised the patients to get their urine tested to diagnose the disease.

The patients gave their urine samples in the lab for tests and were directed to receive the result after two days.

The doctors, on checking their reports were baffled as the reports were blank and faulty, which showed nothing that could ascertain the disease and doctors again directed the patients to go to a private lab and get their result report.

The doctors of the urology department were also puzzled as to why the pathology lab of the hospital was malfunctioning and producing blank result reports but the issue was buried in the name of the hospital’s honour.

The well placed source said that the PIMS administration, in the name of renovation of the pathology lab had received huge public funds from the government that were misappropriated and as a result, the lab was giving blank result reports to the patients.

It is pertinent to mention here that the pathology department of the PIMS is being administered by Dr Ashok Kumar who was inducted into the hospital on political grounds.

It is learnt that Dr Kumar does not pay attention to look after this department because he spends most of his time at the Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University SZABMU where he is studying for the Ph.D programme.

While talking to Daily Times, the PIMS administrator said that an investigation would be conducted into the issue, which depicts sheer negligence of behalf of responsible people.

He said irresponsible people would have to be held accountable for their own misdeeds and the system at the lab would be upgraded and a new expert team would be deployed there to facilitate the sick people.