Sorry state of affairs at Peshawar hospital forces board member to resign.

Byline: Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR -- A senior member of the Board of Governors of Khyber Teaching Hospital has resigned apparently owing to mere frustration by seeing the deteriorating affairs of the major health facility, according to sources.

Dr Mian Tahir Shah, having FRCS from UK to his credit in general surgery, has sent his resignation to health secretary citing personal reasons but sources at the hospital attribute his decision to dismal state of affairs at KTH.

Dr Tahir Shah, a resident of Charsadda, is a graduate of Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad, and currently works as consultant surgeon in Saudi Arabia.

Only two of six BoG members are practicing medical doctors

The PTI-led government in its first tenure in the province passed Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 to do away with the 70-year-old rotten system and incorporate reforms to improve patients' care.

Under the law, BoGs were formed initially in three teaching hospitals, including KTH, to implement the reforms. Dr Tahir Shah, who remained member of BoG of Lady Reading Hospital for three years, was assigned the membership of KTH board in 2018. He quit the board on Saturday.

All BoG members work voluntarily.

Sources said that of the six members of BoG of KTH, only two were practicing medical doctors. The third one, Dr Nadeem, has a long history of pharmaceutical job and business in the past which can lead to conflict of interest.

Dr Faisal Sultan, the chairman of the board, is chief executive officer of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore. Mian Tahir Shah is a consultant surgeon and chair of trauma at one of the tertiary care hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The other three are non-medical people, bereft of any knowledge about hospitals' operations.

Sources said that many a times the BoG members would delay responding to important emails of KTH by weeks that delayed progress on significant matters.

They said that some members were known for interference in the affairs of the hospitals at individual level and influencing the managerial decisions due to which the government's reforms programme suffered a great deal.

'The hospital's plan to purchase MRI machine could not be materialised despite availability of funds due to incompetence of the BoG, which is authorised under the law to...