LARKANA: The only CT Scan machine of the largest teaching hospital of rural Sindh, Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), Larkana, is out of order since last over three months and there seems nobody to get it repaired as the machine’s five-year warranty has also expired about six months back.
At the hospital, 50 to 60 CT scans were made daily when it was functioning but now all the patients requiring this essential diagnostic facility have been forced to get it from private medical centres which are doing roaring business. The CT scan started working on an experimental basis in March 2013 but not a single patient was given CT scan report because there was no expert and the teaching faculty of Chandka Medical College lacked the services of FCPS doctors in the radiology department.
MRI/CT Scan project was approved in 2006 by the then federal government on 50/50 cost-sharing basis for four teaching hospitals of Sindh province out of which two projects were completed at Hyderabad and Karachi but two were delayed at Nawabshah and Larkana. The total cost of the project was Rs 564 million which was to be completed in two years in 2008.
The suppliers were later on blacklisted by the health department but they invented another company which is still continuing. Sources further said that they never replaced the part with new ones which were termed out of order and they just fixed the same part after repair.
This vital diagnostic machine is essential for doctors to diagnose complications. 1500-bed capacity CMCH patients of orthopedic, ophthalmology, surgery, neurosurgery and another vital department will have to undergo exorbitant rates outside the CMCH as almost all of them are worst affected by poverty and the government’s health care system has no CT scan facility.
Meanwhile, a senior doctor in Radiology Department told this scribe on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity as they had been barred by Sindh government not to speak to media that MRI & CT scan machines had become outdated now.
He said this huge hospital needed new sophisticated modern machines on an emergency basis which should be installed at all four blocks of CMCH. He said age-old x-ray machines are still working which must also be urgently replaced if the government wants to run this hospital which is already facing multifarious issues including ghost employees, mismanagement of highest level and nepotism.
The poor needy patients have demanded of the rulers to at least provide them proper health care system by replacing all the old and outdated diagnostic machines, equipment & instruments so that they could be able to have proper medical treatment.
