The poor people of the city have been deprived of free medicines in many government hospitals, as contractors have stopped supply to many government-run hospitals for non-payment of bills. The disruption of supply, which could create serious problems at hospitals, was caused mainly by non-approval of medicines' bills during the financial year 2011-2012, sources said.
Sources said that the medicine suppliers had threatened the government to approach Sindh High Court if their bills were not cleared by it in next few days. They said that payments to contractors were not made due to dispute over undue gains among the departments concerned of the Sindh government.
Sources told Business Recorder that contractors had stopped supplying medicines to Sindh Government Hospital New Karachi, Sindh Government Children Hospital and Urban Health Care Center New Karachi. They said that Sindh government had to pay millions of rupees to the contractors against the medicines they had supplied during the year 2011-2012.
The poor patients visiting these hospitals are compelled to purchase prescribed medicines from private stores, causing hardships for them. "Doctors just overlook the patients here and prescribe medicines, whom we have to buy from the nearby medical stores as the hospital staffs told us none of these are available here," a patient complained.
They said that patient visiting OPDs as well those admitted in the hospitals were buying medicines from private medical stores, as the hospitals administration has failed to give them relief. "How a poor patient buy such an expensive medicines," a patient questioned who was not provided the prescribed medicines from the pharmacy. He said a poor only visit government hospital while the well-off used to opt private hospitals for their treatment.
Mohammed Hussain, suffering from diabetes, said that he has been visiting the hospital pharmacy for last five days but could not manage get medicine prescribed by the doctor of the facility. "Whenever I approached pharmacist after waiting for hours in queues for getting prescribed medicine, he asked me to come next day. I could not manage to acquire medicines despite the passage of five days," he said. Sources also informed that that more than 250 health centers including hospitals, maternity homes and dispensaries being run by Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) have not been provided budget for last six to 10 months.