ISLAMABAD: A newborn baby died on Wednesday due to alleged “sheer negligence” of doctors at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) children hospital.

The infant son of Wajid Khan was born at Dargai District, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa at a private hospital on September 8, and was shifted to the PIMS’s children hospital following instructions of doctors in critical condition.

The doctors at the PIMS refused to admit the baby after initial check up, and asked the parents to shift the baby to another hospital, Khan told Business Recorder. He said that he repeatedly told doctors that he could neither afford private hospitals nor had information of government hospitals in twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, therefore, admit his baby to save his life. “I kept requesting doctors till 9pm to admit my baby but the doctors didn’t hear my hue and cry, leaving me with no option but to take the baby to other hospital,” he said. He said that after losing all hopes, he contacted a friend to bring the issue in the notice of the top management of the PIMS hospital.

“My friend tried to contact Executive Director (ED) PIMS Ansar Masood and Joint Executive Director (JED) Dr Minhajus Siraj and also sent text messages about the issue but none of them neither attended the calls nor bothered to reply to texts,” he said. He said that later at around 9:30pm, an attendant of another patient told him to shift his baby to Benazir Bhutto Hospital Rawalpindi as doctor would not hear his grievance even if he kept waiting the whole night.

“Then I left PIMS’ children hospital and moved to Benazir Bhutto Hospital Rawalpindi, where doctors admitted my baby but told me that I have wasted a lot of time. The condition of my baby had deteriorated due to delay in admission, and he expired on Wednesday morning,” he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020