Daily Times

Provincial President of Peoples Doctors Forum (PDF) Professor Dr Nisar Khan has expressed deep concern over post-corona health situation and said no one knows when corona pandemic will end & life gets back to normal; therefore the government needs to have a visionary approach to handle this fast moving crisis and take along all sectors, especially when it comes to following precautionary measures, including social distances.

Briefing to newsmen on Tuesday, renowned pulmonologist & former chief executive Ayub Teaching Hospital Dr Nisar Khan asked the government to take immediate steps to stop criminal attitude with the suspect patients of Covid-19, which he claimed has created panic & fear among st them . He said that a comprehensive policy is need of the hour to handle not only the Covid patients but also thousands of other patients who need special attention & were badly suffered. He said that Patients of number of chronic diseases have badly affected as most of the hospitals especially public hospitals stopped treating patients of other diseases & put on hold different surgeries. He told that this pandemic has exposed the healthcare system in the country especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where so called reforms namely Medical Teaching Institutions (MTIs) has completely destroyed the health care system in public sector. ” Number of doctors have resigned, Patients have been suffering including health care professionals who were infected corona due to non-provision of PPEs and health care system headed by Dr Nosherwan Burki in KPK seems to be full of disaster which needs to be reviewed”, he added.

Dr Nisar Khan has also expressed concern over opening of lock down in the country as having no national consensus which he predicted will increase the corona cases & will have a difficult task for health department to control. He asked the government to take immediate step for the increasing disappointment in doctors’ community by providing them PPEs, Risk allowance & Shohada Package beside removing all those health managers who have been running the public health system through remote controls for their vested interest.

Replying to a query he told that provincial government has provided manual PCR Machines to Ayub Medical Teaching Institution (AMTI) as Public Health Laboratory for the laboratory tests of COVID-19 , whereas the state of the art automatic machine has been shifted to Chief Minister’s home town. He told that staff on duty have to be in danger & were exposed at stage of extraction manually, wash & mix process manually before reading by PCR. In complete automatic PCR machines all these three stages are done by the machine in closed chamber. Replying to another query, he said that Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new virus which causes respiratory illness with symptoms such as a cough, fever, and in more severe cases, difficulty breathing. He asked people to protect yourself by washing your hands frequently, avoiding touching face, and avoiding close contact with people who feel unwell.

Dr Nisar Khan replying to another question told that more than 2500 patients per day have only been suffering in Ayub Teaching hospital who have either been avoiding to visit hospital or denied of providing medical cover. Similarly patients were reluctant to visit Lady reading hospital Peshawar where Gynae ward has been closed & doctors have been protesting & resigning. The situation in other hospitals of the province is not different and thousands of patients of different diseases like Cardiology, Demonology, Orthopaedic, ENT and Liver have been suffering.