Mayo's administrative, financial issues hit patients, medics.

LAHORE -- The administrative and financial affairs of the Mayo Hospital, Lahore, the largest public sector teaching institute of the province, are being ignored by the top health authorities, resulting in deterioration in patient care and extra financial burden on patients, especially the poor ones.

As per sources, the public institute comprising more than 2600 beds was facing multiple issues, including the non-payment of salaries to the Postgraduate Residents (PGRs) and an acute shortage of life-saving medicine, which are adversely affecting the patients, as well as the medics, for the last many months.

There are also reports of supply of low-quality medicines to the institute through Local Purchase (LP) system, bribe from contractors and incompetence of the managerial staff.

However, the caretaker chief minister Punjab, the health secretary and the vice chancellor of the King Edward Medical University have been turning a blind eye to the problems of patients as well as the young medics.According to sources, some 300 fresh PGRs inducted in January 2023 into the Mayo, Lady Willingdon, Lady Aitchison and Kot Khwaja Saeed hospitals, attached to the King Edward Medical University (KEMU), who were serving in various wards of these institutes, have not been paid salaries so far.

Mayo Hospital Chapter of the Young Doctors' Association Punjab (YDA) spokesperson Dr Ahmad Kamal told Dawn the KEMU administration had halted the process for payment of salaries following a policy under which the medics would get paid some 5-6 months after their induction.

Declaring it an 'absurd policy', he said how these employees and their families would survive for nearly half a year without salaries, especially in the face of unprecedented inflation in the country. He said the association held a series of meetings with the KEMU and the Mayo Hospital administration, with a request to review the policy, but to no avail.

He said the cold response by the administrations to their repeated written requests forced the medics on Monday to shut down the OPD services at the Mayo Hospital. They also raised slogans against the administration, staged a sit-in at the institute, threatening to expand the scope of agitation to other hospitals, if they were not paid the wages they were promised at the time of their induction, Dr Kamal said.

Besides, the Mayo Hospital has also been facing an acute shortage of life-saving medicines for several months.

An official list points out...