SHC cracks the whip on hospital committee

The Sindh High Court has tightened the screws on a committee tasked with improving services at Civil Hospital Mirpurkhas, directing its members to identify and actually resolve deficiencies instead of merely repeating recommendations in inspection reports. The SHC's Mirpurkhas bench, comprising Justice Zulfikar Ali Sangi and Justice Amjad Ali Bohio, expressed dissatisfaction with the committee's performance two years after it was constituted to oversee improvements in service delivery at the hospital. "it could not function as required and the prescribed visits were not carried out," the court observed in its order, laying down a fresh roadmap for the committee to discharge its responsibilities more proactively. The committee comprises the Mirpurkhas Commissioner, District Health Officer and Medical Superintendent. The bench directed its members not only to identify problems at the district headquarters hospital (DHQ) but also to take steps to resolve them. It ordered that progress made on problems identified in one fortnightly report must be reflected in the subsequent report, making it clear that inspection reports could no longer simply reproduce earlier recommendations. "The next inspection report should not merely repeat recommendations for improvement," the court observed. The bench also directed officials to stop using vague terms such as "satisfactory", "functional" and "complied with" and instead support their reports with concrete facts and figures. At the previous hearing on August 19, the court had sought separate reports on the state of health services in every department of the hospital. However, the committee submitted a general account instead. "The report is silent about trauma centre, neurology, psychiatry, gastroenterology, nephrology, thalassemia and scanning department," the order noted, adding that the court had expected a thorough inspection. "The inspection as placed on record does not meet that standard," the bench observed. The court also questioned whether Civil Hospital Mirpurkhas currently has the facilities and services required to qualify as a tertiary care hospital. The report noted that patients requiring complex surgical procedures were being referred to hospitals outside Mirpurkhas. The bench also expressed concern over the hospital's human-resource situation, noting that against 160 sanctioned vacancies for doctors, only 102 doctors were working at the DHQ hospital. Similarly, only 17 specialists were available against 47 vacant specialist posts.