After a third suicide attack in public sector hospitals during last one year, Sindh Health Department had issued directives to ensure tight security for safety of both patients and paramedics.
In fresh instructions to the management of publicly-owned healthcare institutions, the health department hinted that hospitals could be targeted by the militants and other terrorist groups where huge numbers of crisis-hit masses visit for treatment purposes, sources told Business Recorder on Saturday. Sketching the condition of some of the city's highly dependable hospitals, they said that none of them could develop well-planned security system.
There was no centralised monitoring system in any of the city's public sector hospitals, they added. "The public sector hospitals in the city are divided into federal, provincial and the local governments-run healthcare institutions. How they develop security?"
They said that although the administrations of federally run hospitals have installed barriers, there are no security guards to operate them to check criminal elements. Healthcare institutions working under the control of provincial government like Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), Sindh Government Hospital Saudabad (SGHS), Liaquatabad General Hospital (LGH), Sindh Government Qatar Hospital (SGQH) and Layari General Hospital (LGH) are neither guarded properly nor fenced. Even the criminal elements resort to aerial firing in hospitals like LGH and SGHS when their patients, admitted in these hospitals, die during treatment process.
However, the healthcare institutions working under present local governments system had adopted different security measures to protect the crisis-hit masses and the paramedics, but they also failed to evolve centralised monitoring system.