Health without wealth

The story began about 2 years ago. When my younger brother’s wife obtained an appointment from Dr. Shireen Bhutta, a senior doctor and gynaecologist at Dr. Ziauddin Hospita, Clifton campus. This appoint was for a routine check-up for her pregnancy. She may be senior gynaecologist but to my brother she acted like a writer of many scary movies. She scared my sister-in-law like an ugly and horrifying ghost. Rather than listening to the patient she spent most of her time in writing several tests and Vitamin A supplement which is never allowed to any woman during pregnancy. Since it was her first pregnancy she didn’t resist and accepted a bundle of prescription containing tests, medicines and vitamin A supplement. The doctor was succeeded in catching up a fortnightly client. Luckily, she got cat in the bag. Time kept passing by and she receives too many visits from the patient on an going basis. When baby became due she vanished from the hospital. When enquired we were told that she’s attending a conference in Islamabad and will not be available for a long time. We were shocked to hear this news. She never informed that she was going to attend the conference leaving the mother helpless. Anyway, we used the replacement doctor service, and so unluckily, an immature and inexperience lady doctor was given in our fate. Now the interesting part was the nurses in the hospital. The morning nurses and the evening nurses were two different things like hell and heaven, earth and sky, hot and cold, fire and ice, Khursheed Mahmood Qusuri and Condoleezza Rice. A big controversy between the two groups, I would say. Apart from that, we found big discrepancies between the doctor’s and nurse’s actions. If morning shift said YES to something then it was obvious that evening shift would say NO or vice versa. The patient became a sandwich between the two groups. This also resulted a really bad care but FREE-IN-THE-AIR DESI instructions and remedies suggested by the controversial group of nurses and doctor. An apple was never an apple for other shift, it was, indeed, an orange for them and quite interestingly the doctor declared it an apricot. It was hard to give judgement who’s right and who’s wrong