#Pakistan - Birth in a hospital washroom - SHAME @ImranKhanPTI - NAYA #PAKISTAN

It is a matter of shame that a poor woman had to deliver a baby in the washroom of the mosque of the Jinnah Hospital in Lahore after on-duty gynaecologists allegedly denied her treatment on the grounds that she did not get her blood work done from the a private lab of their choice. Though a fact-finding committee tasked with probing the allegation has yet to deliver its report, the fact remains that the baby girl was born in the washroom of the mosque and that too on the premises of an established, well-equipped teaching hospital. Moreover, the hospital record also establishes that the patient, Asifa Hammad, wife of Hammad, driver by occupation, visited late on Wednesday in acute labour pain. She says the doctors were insisting that she go to a specific private lab.

The incident only points to the ugly reality that unprofessionalism rules our health care places. Hospitals are places for healing wounds, not to injure visitors’ health and self-respect. In March 2018, the Services Hospital turned out to be the place of death of a youth, who had come to the hospital to attend a patient. The police registered a murder case against several doctors, security guards and staffers but the case went nowhere. In 2016, Young Doctors’ Association activists subjected a Dunya News reporter to physical torture at Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital. Before that in December 2016, the administration and young doctors of Shaikh Zayed Hospital got into a steamy scuffle ,making the hospital a war ground where dozens of the hospital staff members were physically and verbally attacking each other.

The health care sector has witnessed growing commercialism at the cost of professionalism over the years. Unprofessionalism runs high in public hospitals as our ruling elite have started their own private hospitals and medical colleges. The previous ruling family – the House of Sharif – runs a commercial medical complex in Raiwind but they prefer foreign medical centres for their own treatment. Taking a cue from successive governments’ indifference towards public hospitals, doctors and paramedics have become hostile towards patients. No doubt, public hospitals are crowded with patients and their worried attendants as overworked doctors and nurses try to cope with painful situations with their occasional smiles and frequent frowns. In such situations, incidents like births in washrooms are bound to occur.

https://dailytimes.com.pk/567245/birth-in-a-hospital-washroom-daily-times/