Are private hospitals still denying treatment to victims of attacks and disasters despite Amal Act?

Relatives of an 18-year-old boy who died in Wednesday’s Maskan Chowrangi explosion protested against the Patel Hospital, alleging that Yasir Siddique succumbed to his injuries as the hospital’s administration denied treatment before a payment was made.

The private hospital and the Sindh government, however, denied the accusation, saying no private hospital could deny medical treatment to a person injured in an emergency.

A large number of the deceased’s relatives tried ransacking the hospital’s property, alleging that the teenager died due to “lust and greed of the private medical centre in Gulshan-e-Iqbal”.

Subsequently, Sindh Secretary Health Kazim Jatoi rushed to the hospital where most of the injured of the blast had been brought. “Nobody asked for a single penny from the injured or their relatives for the treatment,” he told media persons Wednesday afternoon.

“After the promulgation of the Sindh Injured Persons Compulsory Medical Treatment (Amal Umer) Act 2019, all hospitals in the province are bound to treat the injured without asking any question and demanding the cost of treatment,” he said. “I have inquired from the administration of the Patel Hospital and they have denied these allegations. Several injured of the blast have been brought to this hospital – some of them in serious condition – and they are being treated as per the protocols on a priority basis.”

Denying the allegation, the Patel Hospital’s administration said that as per the law and their internal medical policy, they provided medical assistance and treatment to all injured persons as well as those who were burnt in fire incidents.

“Nobody asked for money from Yasir’s family. We requested them to identify the person who demanded money but they could not,” the administration said.

“We, as a major hospital, are bound to follow the law. And as per the Amal Umer Act 2019 and our own policy, we provide free of charge medical assistance to persons who get injured in explosions, disasters, calamities and other such incidents,” Major (retd) Muhammad Nadeem, the administrator of the Patel Hospital, said while talking to The News.

The hospital’s administrator said he was not aware whether the Sindh government or the health department reimbursed the cost incurred on the treatment of patients who were injured in accidents and disasters. He added that being a welfare hospital “many of the patients who cannot afford treatment, the cost of their medical treatment is borne by the hospital, which also gets donation for this purpose”.

But owners of some private hospitals claim that although they are bound to provide medical treatment to the victims of the explosions, violence and disasters, the Sindh health department in most of the cases does not reimburse the cost incurred on the treatment of patients which makes it difficult for them to continue the treatment and after the patients are out of danger, most of them are shifted to public hospitals.

“The track record of the Sindh government and the health department is very bad in reimbursing the cost and paying the bills to the private hospitals. Now, most private hospitals try to get rid of patients as soon as possible and after they are in a stable condition, they are shifted to public hospitals,” the owner of a leading private hospital in Karachi told The News.

He said medical treatment at a private hospital was “a very costly business as it requires surgeries, the use of medicines and supplies, diagnostics and radiological investigations and the fees of consultants”.

He said that in some cases, hundreds of thousands of rupees were incurred on the treatment of seriously injured people within a few hours or just in a day.

“Sometimes, the relatives of the injured insist on the continuation of treatment at private hospitals but they cannot afford it. They claim it is the job of the government to bear the treatment cost but the track record of the government is very poor in this regard,” he charged.

But an official of the Sindh government said the provincial health department had never stopped payment to the private hospitals when it asked them to treat the patients and the injured.

“We are providing millions of rupees to several private hospitals for the treatment of patients whom we refer to them. Usually, we send our patients to the Aga Khan Hospital and the Liaquat National Hospitals,” an official of the Sindh health department claimed.

“We provide millions of rupees to them as per their bills. We are also getting our patients treated at the National Institute of Blood Diseases and the Dow University Hospital and for that, we also provide them hundreds of millions of rupees.”