MNA demands facilities in Chitral hospitals

F.P. Report

CHITRAL: Member National Assembly (MNA) Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali has said that the coronavirus has hit the country a month ago but there is nothing to control or diagnose this epidemic at Chitral hospitals which can lead to the outspread of virus in Chitral.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Abdul Akbar Chitrali said that cramming people into rooms like cattle in the so-called quarantine centers can be a disaster in the making. Quarantine means keeping a suspected infected person in a single room and if it is not possible there should be at least six feet distance between two individuals, he added.

He said that in the so-called quarantine centres set up in government buildings in Upper Chitral such as Booni, people returning from cities are being kept like cattle. This is tantamount to inviting coronavirus. God forbids if any of the individuals is carrying the virus he could spread it to all others, he maintained. Maulana Abdul Akber Chitrali said those coming from outside Chitral were also kept under the open sky without keeping precautionary measures.

He said though Upper Chitral is now a district, the Teshil Headquarters (THQ) Hospital in Booni has not been upgraded to the District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital. The MNA said despite lack of safety kits, the health department staff members were screening people across Chitral. Chitral is a backward area with poor system of healthcare system and if the coronavirus reached here it would be a disaster, he warned.

He demanded that the KP government should immediately release Rs400 million for Upper Chitral and Rs500 million for Lower Chitral to deal with any possible outbreak of the virus. Later, the MS of the DHQ Hospital Chitral told the MNA that all the four ventilators of the hospital were out of order from years. However, an engineering team has arrived from Peshawar which would soon make the vents operational.

The MS said he had sought 3,000 safety kits but in response he was provided only 100. “We have set up an isolation ward in the hospital in which eight doctors, eight nurses and eight Class IV are working in shift. The safety kits sent by the provincial government can be used by these staff in one day because they are disposable,’” he added.

It is worth to mention here that some 60 % posts of Doctors lying vacant at District headquarters hospital lower Chitral and some 90 posts of doctors in entire district vacant. As well as no scanner machine, no laboratory, no extra ventilator machines were sent to any hospital of upper and Lower Chitral districts.