PHC seeks KP govt reply on plea over 'lack' of health facilities in tribal districts

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary and other officials on a petition alleging inadequate health facilities in Upper South Waziristan and seeking the establishment of a fully functional district headquarters hospital there.

A bench comprising Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Inamullah Khan directed the respondents, including the chief secretary, provincial health secretary and director general health services, to file replies to the petition submitted by several residents of the district.

The petition was jointly moved by residents of Ladha tehsil, including Sherpao alias Paji, Asifur Rehman and others. They asked the court to declare that the denial of adequate healthcare in Upper South Waziristan was unconstitutional and amounted to a violation of the fundamental rights of local residents.

Petition seeks hospital and staff

The petitioners requested court orders to ensure the availability of qualified and specialist doctors, including female medical staff, as well as essential medicines and required medical equipment. They also sought directions for making all basic health units, rural health centres and civil dispensaries fully operational, particularly in remote localities including Karama.

In addition, they asked for the urgent establishment of medico-legal units and postmortem facilities in the district.

Advocate Sajjad Ahmad Mehsud, appearing for the petitioners, told the court that before 2018, South Waziristan was a tribal agency within the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that after the merger of Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the Constitution (Twenty-fifth Amendment) Act, South Waziristan was given the status of a settled district.

Counsel cites post-merger obligations

The lawyer further said that the KP government, through a 2022 notification, divided South Waziristan into Upper and Lower South Waziristan districts. He argued that after the creation of Upper South Waziristan, the authorities became legally and constitutionally responsible for providing essential infrastructure, including administrative offices, law enforcement arrangements and, in particular, a fully functional district headquarters hospital.

According to the counsel, 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. He contended that the existing healthcare network consisted of only a small number of BHUs and minor health centres, many of which were either not functioning or were severely short of staff, medicines and equipment.

Mr Mehsud also told the court that there were no medico-legal facilities, postmortem units or medico-legal officers in the district, forcing residents to take bodies to other districts for postmortem examinations. He said this caused delays, affected forensic evidence and created difficulties for the administration of justice.

He further argued that in medical emergencies, residents had to travel long distances, often five to seven hours to Dera Ismail Khan and 14 to 15 hours to Peshawar, which he said frequently led to preventable deaths during transit because timely treatment was unavailable.

The respondents named in the petition are the KP government through the 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.