Sobhraj Hospital - Patients suffer amid filthy environment

MN Report

KARACHI - Illegal parking and overflowing gutters all around Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) Sobhraj Maternity Hospital (SMH) have become a major source of pollution, causing immense hardships to patients, their attendants as well as to the employees of the hospital.

An official of the SMH, who wished not to be quoted, said that unlawful encroachments on adjacent pavements and illegal parking outside the main entrance of the hospital have become a permanent nuisance for the patients, their attendance, doctors and other staff of the hospital.

Even drivers of ambulance drivers have been facing great hardship in shifting patients to the hospital, he added.

Moreover, filthy water gushing out from overflowing gutters in and around hospital has, on the one hand, added to the miseries to all those visiting the hospital and, on the other, has created an stinking atmosphere, thereby posing serious health hazards to the patients and all those working in the hospital.

The sources complained that although officials of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s anti-encroachment cell have been repeatedly requested to remove all sorts of encroachments from the hospital’s pavements and also those existing in front of its main gate, all their requests have, so far, went in vain.

Similarly, the hospital’s management’s requests to the officials of Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) for rectifying the faults responsible for chocked gutters have fallen on deaf ear.

They also complained that heaps of garbage which often dumped near the hospital’s main gate remained there for days together, creating an unhygienic condition in the vicinity of the hospital.

However, when the KMC Medical Services’ senior director Dr Salma Kausar was apprised about the insanitary condition and encroachments on the hospital’s pavements, she said that no one has brought the issue into her knowledge before.