Op-Ed: Cardiology hospital in Pakistan can't fix angiography machine

Lahore - More than 4 months have passed since the problem with the function of an angiography machine was reported in PIC, Lahore, and still there is no progress in getting it repaired.

The Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC), Lahore, was in national and international headlines in Pakistan early this year after more than hundred patients died in just three weeks from free medicine given to them at the hospital. While the matter was taken to the court, and an anti-malarial agent Pyrimethamine in one of the drugs was found to have caused the fatalities, nobody was brought to justice; or at least not reported in media. The issue vanished from media as quickly as it had made news explosively. Now it is learnt that the same institute is not capable of setting an angiography machine to function. A report in The Frontier Post informs that PIC, which is run by the provincial government of Punjab, has failed to set its non-functional angiography machine to work even after four months when the problem was reported. This problem with one of the five such machines at PIC is causing heart patients and their family great inconvenience. The paper reports that the hospital receives about 70 to 80 patients daily who need an angiography test. A source with firsthand experience told the paper, as it is reported in the post, that the hospital’s administration is not interested in solving the problems of patients. The interesting part of this management failure is the excuse of the hospital’s medical superintendent who says that “only one in five machines” was out of order and it required imported spare parts because these are imported machines. So it implies that the provincial government cannot import important machine parts while the ruling party’s chief flies to UK for treating angina while his party can distribute laptops worth billions among students, assuming this will lead to a better future for the nation. For an inept administration, the present doesn’t seem to matter and so heart patients in Punjab keep suffering and dying while the government is worried about winning the next general election.