Asif Mahmood

PIMS has never released official statistics, but according to a cautious estimate, around 70 percent of the patients who come to PIMS are not local residents. The largest number of non-local patients come from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Nearly 80 percent of the non-local patients are from KP. The question is: why?

After the 18th Amendment, health became a provincial subject, and every province has its own health budget. The KP government has a health budget of Rs334 billion. Would Muzammil Aslam care to explain why, despite a budget of Rs334 billion, such a large number of patients from KP come to PIMS? Why are adequate medical facilities not available to them in KP?

KP is, after all, governed by some very fine people. They are not corrupt either. They are highly educated and widely read. They are exceptionally honest as well. They have placed the health sector in the hands of Imran Khan’s talented cousin, Nosherwan Burki, who, through his vision, has already transformed KP’s hospitals to international standards. The question, then, is why do 80 percent of the non-local patients at PIMS come from KP? Why do patients from KP leave behind their province’s supposedly excellent, outstanding and remarkable hospitals and head towards Islamabad?

Islamabad has only two government hospitals: PIMS and Polyclinic. These were the same two hospitals when Islamabad’s population was only 250,000, and they remain the same two hospitals today, when the city’s population is close to 2.5 million. The population has increased tenfold, yet not a single additional government hospital has been built. If 70 percent of the patients are coming from outside Islamabad, where are the local residents supposed to go?

Islamabad’s problem is that it is an orphaned city. It has neither a local government nor a provincial assembly. It has MNAs, though. Sometimes, when Javed Hashmi loses an election from his own constituency, the PML-N imposes him on Islamabad through a by-election. At other times, thanks to Imran Khan, a person without a constituency of his own, such as Asad Umar, is made an MNA from Islamabad. Is there anyone who can explain what either of these two honourable gentlemen has to do with Islamabad?

The sense of being treated as a stepchild has seeped into the veins of this city. There are two hospitals in the city, yet there is hardly any space for local residents in them. There is an influx of patients from other provinces. Every province has a sense of identity and a strong concern for its own resources. Islamabad, however, has no such identity. There is no one to ask why 70 percent of the patients in the city’s two government hospitals are non-local.

No one has even done something as simple as establishing a quota or proportion: a certain number of patients would be treated as local residents and a certain number would be accommodated from outside. If even that was not possible, surely a separate counter could have been established for local residents so that they would not have to spend hours standing in queues because of the influx from elsewhere. The situation has now reached the point where the citizens of Islamabad have become strangers in their own city, yet there is no one to raise their voice.

At the very least, there should be an annual record showing how many patients came from each province. After that, Punjab and KP, at the very least, should be told: this year, this many of your patients came to Islamabad for treatment, and therefore this much money is being transferred from your provincial health budget to these hospitals.

There is absolutely no justification for a situation in which local residents have virtually no space in Islamabad’s hospitals, while, after the 18th Amendment, most of the patients being treated in hospitals serving Islamabad and funded for the benefit of its residents come from other provinces.

There are, of course, certain serious illnesses for which an exception is justified. If the required treatment is not available in the relevant province, there is nothing wrong with patients coming to PIMS or Polyclinic. That is understandable and perfectly legitimate. But that is not the situation here. Every kind of patient comes here. Should these provinces not be asked why, despite receiving the health budgets allocated to them under the 18th Amendment, their patients continue to come to hospitals in Islamabad?

We are constantly lectured about the virtues of KP. Its government is showered with praise. They are portrayed as humane and devoted to the poor. They do not indulge in corruption. Their integrity is beyond question. In terms of performance, they are presented as Rustom and Sohrab. Yet the reality is that their patients come to Islamabad for treatment.