MN Report
KARACHI: As many as 39 posts of pharmacists are lying vacant in Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), it was reliably learnt.
The sources Medical News spoke to confirmed that only two qualified pharmacists are, at present, discharging their duties at the health facility as against 41 sanctioned posts of pharmacists. “As a matter of fact, 39 posts of pharmacists are lying vacant in the CHK since long and as such a number of unqualified staff has been assigned the task of pharmacists and they were playing havoc with the patients’ lives,” they deplored.
Highlighting the importance of pharmacists, they said that their role in the purchase of medicines as well as in ensuring drugs’ quality, storage under proper temperature and distribution, etc., but in the absence of a huge number of pharmacists, their task was being performed by unqualified employees of the hospital.
They claimed that although it was mandatory to appoint one pharmacist for every 50 beds, Sindh health department has utterly failed in filling as many as 39 vacant posts of pharmacists in the CHK alone.
Commenting over acute shortage of pharmacists at the CHK, Pakistan Pharmacists Association’s (PPA) central president Syed Qalb-e-Hasan Rizvi said that despite the fact that pharmacists play an important role in the provision of proper healthcare facilities to patients, Sindh government seemed to be least interested in filling vacant posts of pharmacists.
“In fact, similar situation was prevailing in other public sector hospitals of the province,” he regretted.
He said that although Punjab government had appointed pharmacists to fill all the posts which were lying vacant in the public sector hospitals of the province, a number of Sindh government hospitals are still deprived of pharmacists.
Meanwhile, all the efforts made by this correspondent to seek the CHK’s medical superintendent’s version in this regard went in vain.