LARKANA- The largest tertiary-care hospital of rural Sindh, is currently being run by only one Senior Dental Surgeon of BPS-18, which indicates towards the condition of governance in Sindh.
Earlier, it was revealed that, 02 dental surgeons were catering patients with dental ailments of not only the entire district of Larkana, but were also dealing with medico-legal cases; and recently, one of them retired.
In this connection, the Medical Superintendent, Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), recently sent an urgent letter to the Director General, Health Services, Sindh, Hyderabad, requesting him to increase posts of Dental Surgeons in the SNE.
The letter also shed light upon the issue of handling Medico-Legal cases and Maxillofacial Surgeries, which cannot be dealt with by a single doctor. Due to the immense amount of workload, one dental surgeon cannot well.
It must be mentioned here that, a 30-bedded Dental Department was established in CMCH in 2015, costing millions of rupees but uptil now, no patient has been admitted due to scarcity of proper doctors. The machinery, equipment and instruments costing approximately Rs 20 million have gone to waste, as nobody is available to use them for the benefit of poor patients.
Private clinics of specialist doctors, who work under Benazir Bhutto Medical University are flourishing.
OPD operated under and by the dental surgeons of Bibi Aseefa Dental College (BADC) is working, but CMCH ‘s OPD was closed down arbitrarily after opening of BADC, causing issues for needy patients. At BADC, patients have to pay for various treatments, whereas at CMCH services were provided free of cost.
Moving onto the matter of BADC doctors handling Medico-Legal cases, they have refused to examine or operate on such cases, to avoid making frequent appearances in courts.
Sources disclosed that, District Hospital, Shikarpur has 09 posts of dentists and dental surgeons, Nawabshah has 07 posts, Jacobabad 06 posts, Liaquat University Hospital has 12 posts and they are demanding creation of 30 more posts due to rush of patients, but CMCH has constantly been ignored for unknown reasons by the Government during their past 10 years rule, despite the fact that indisposed people of more than 12 districts reach out to this particular health facility to get medical treatment and undergo surgeries.
