Lack of manpower, resources: NICVD fails to facilitate patients in an effective way

Due to lack of required manpower and resources National Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (NICVD) has failed to facilitate its patients in an effective manner. The patients at Out Patient Department (OPD) of NICVD are facing immense difficulties during treatment due to lack of resources to deal with increasing number of patients.
Increasing workload and limited manpower are causing delay in getting appointments and treatment process, a brief visit on Saturday at the only government-run cardiac institute revealed these crucial facts. A large number of cardiac patients are forced to purchase costly medicines from private medical stores due to acute shortage of medicines at NICVD.
It was also observed by scribe that the store In-charge misbehaved with the poverty-stricken masses, when they forced hospital management to ensure availability of drugs. An angry employee of NICVD staff told Business Recorder said that the number of patients at OPD is increasing rapidly, but the management has not devised plan to facilitate them and the institute has no sufficient number of staff to deal with the patients in an appropriate manner. He said, 'The number of visiting patients has been increased from 1500 to 1700 in a day.'
Expressing grave concern an echo-cardiograph machine operator said, "from dawn to dusk, we remain busy in moving heavy machinery from one floor to another, as there is shortage of machines.' Many life-saving machines have developed faults and have not been fixed since past two months, he disclosed.
He said, however, Administrative In-charge of NICVD, Muhammad Raza Chaudhry, has been informed many times about faults in machines and also sent written requests many times for their reparation, but he has not paid any attention so far on our problems.
Due to bulk of patients both at ICU and OPD and that too shortage of machines, we are not able to treat a patient as per requirement, he added. An angio-grapher informed that there is acute shortage of paramedical staff for providing up to the mark services to the visiting patients, but the administration, instead of increasing staff, has forced the employees to perform extra duties.
'Now we are doing jobs in more than one department sometime in OPD and sometime in CCU and ICU,' the angiographer added. Furthermore, expressing his grievances, he said that the employees of NICVD are facing hardships and no promotion has been made since long, adding that the administration has not maintained seniority list as well since past two years, hence discontent among staff is spreading rapidly.'
'I am suffering from a cardiac disease and need medicines, but I have been said that costly medicines are not available in the store and directed me to buy them from private medical store,' said a patient, who had arrived from Badin for getting medicines from federal government health centre.
He said, 'the doctors had referred me to get one-week medicines from NICVD medical store, but the store-keeper has refused to issue one week medicines, instead I was issued medicines for three days. The store-Incharge said that due to non-availability of imported drugs, it was not possible to go along doctor's recommendations.'
Another patient, who was being discharged said, 'I came from Shahdadkot and was admitted at CCU, but I was not provided medicines from the pharmacy of the hospital and I had to purchase privately.' He further said that in public hospital government is responsible to facilitate public and should bear their expenses, too, instead the officials of NICVD forced him to pay treatment charges.
He said, 'the doctors usually prescribe costly medicines, which are unaffordable to poor patients and I also could not buy medicines and injections recommended by the doctors. I was not able to afford expense of treatment and finally requested the doctors to discharge me without complete cure,' he said. At the end of the day, many awaited patients went back to their homes without treatment and getting medicines from the hospital. Despite repeated attempts Executive Director, NICVD could not be reached for comments.