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KARACHI: Why does the Jinnah Hospital’s National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) have private clinics being a public entity? A Sindh High Court judge inquired on Monday from the provincial government amid alleged corruption to the tune of billions in the hospital.
On the complaint of a terminated NICVD doctor, Dr Tariq Sheikh, the Sindh court asked the Sindh government defence how a public entity was allowed to have private clinics? To which the defence replied it was owing to a legal provision and underlined the 70 per cent revenue earned from the private practice goes to the hospital.
The judge then asked why other public hospitals were not allowing private practice then and what was the fault of their fault? The lawyer said the purpose is to transform NICVD into a state of the art facility.
SHC Judge Justice Salahuddin Panhwar then asked if Indus Hospital was not a precedent and a ground reality when Senator Raza Rabbani told court that ground realities must be accounted for when suggesting all public hospitals be turned into sophisticated facilities.
Why there’s a great disparity between the Indus Hospital and Civil Hospital? The judge asked.
The judge said what purpose does it serve if the hospital is built five-star standard but the poor cannot get medical treatment? Is it only to facilitate a few you have built a facility at the expense of all the people that the budget is for?
When the lawyer replied that SIUT and Indus received heavy charity which NICVD doesn’t, the judge said if you do your work honestly and sincerely people will hand out funds.
He directed to deal with the governing body matter afresh and to sit the conflicting parties together to work out a solution.