Daily Times

The state of affairs is sorry enough when an impoverished country is unable to provide its citizens with quality healthcare because of monetary constraints and lack of trained personnel. When negligence and malice are also added into the mix, it makes matters even worse. On April 22, a nine-month-old child by the name of Nashwa expired in a private Karachi hospital after being incorrectly administered medication earlier this month. In another incident, at least four staffers at a government hospital in Karachi — including a doctor — were involved in the rape and murder of a female patient who had come to the hospital seeking medical attention for a toothache.

Citizens across the country routinely put their lives in the hands of untrained medical personnel and bad-faith actors, only to have this trust violated. The consequences are often tragic. It is no wonder then that trust in Pakistani medical institutions has ebbed away over the years. Perhaps this can be best noted in this country’s political elite’s insistence of receiving medical treatment abroad.

Ordinary Pakistanis however, are not so lucky. They find themselves trapped in a situation where they must risk their lives at the hands of untrained or uninterested hospital staff every time they are unfortunate enough to have to visit a hospital. Perhaps it would even be fair to compare Pakistani medical institutions to its police stations.

And yet we find that nothing is being done about this situation. Incidents like the ones mentioned above seem common enough. Yet we hardly ever seem to hear about the perpetrators of such crimes taken to task for their actions.

The federal and provincial governments cannot ignore this situation any longer. Both hospitals must be sealed with immediate effect as soon as their in-house patients can be transferred to other facilities. Inquiries must be initiated and all personnel found involved — from doctors to orderlies — must be arrested. It is high time that those who are supposed to heal this country’s citizens stopped playing with their lives. *