PHC petition seeks better health facilities in Upper South Waziristan

PESHAWAR: Several residents of Upper South Waziristan have approached the Peshawar High Court, complaining about what they described as the absence of adequate health services in the district and seeking the establishment of a fully functional district headquarters hospital.

The petition was jointly filed by residents of Ladha tehsil, including Sherpao alias Paji, Asifur Rehman and others, through Advocate Sajjad Ahmad Mehsud. The petitioners asked the court to declare that the denial of sufficient health facilities in Upper South Waziristan is unconstitutional and amounts to a violation of the fundamental rights of local citizens.

They also requested the court to direct the respondents, including the provincial government, to ensure the availability of qualified and specialist doctors, including female medical staff, along with essential medicines and necessary medical equipment.

In addition, the petition sought court orders for making all basic health units, rural health centres and civil dispensaries fully operational, especially in remote localities such as Karama. The petitioners further asked for the urgent establishment of medico-legal units and post-mortem facilities within the district.

Background cited in petition

According to the petition, South Waziristan was part of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas before 2018. It said that after the merger of Fata into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the Constitution (Twenty-fifth Amendment) Act, South Waziristan was given the status of a settled district.

The petition added that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government later issued a notification in 2022 dividing South Waziristan into Upper and Lower South Waziristan districts. The petitioners argued that after the creation of Upper South Waziristan, the authorities became legally and constitutionally responsible for providing essential infrastructure, including administrative offices, a law enforcement system and, most importantly, a fully functional district headquarters hospital.

They contended that despite the passage of considerable time since the district’s creation, the authorities had not established the DHQ hospital, leaving the population without basic and essential healthcare services.

Claims about existing facilities

The petitioners stated that the current healthcare setup in the district consists of only a small number of BHUs and minor health centres. They claimed that these facilities are either not functioning or are severely under-resourced, lacking qualified staff, medicines and essential equipment, making them ineffective for meaningful treatment.

They further stated that there are no medico-legal facilities, post-mortem units or medico-legal officers in the district. According to the petition, residents are therefore forced to transport bodies to other districts for post-mortem examinations, causing delays, affecting forensic evidence and creating difficulties in the administration of justice.

The petitioners also said that in medical emergencies, residents have to travel long distances, often between five and seven hours to Dera Ismail Khan and up to 14 to 15 hours to Peshawar. They claimed that the lack of timely medical intervention during such journeys has frequently led to preventable deaths in transit.

The respondents named in the petition are the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government through its chief secretary, the secretaries of the health and planning and development departments, the director general health services, the district health officer and deputy commissioner of Upper South Waziristan, and the Independent Monitoring Unit Health through its director.