Few days back I read a blog at UM Healthcare website, “UM Saves life of expecting mother and her baby”, and it really touched me as it is similar to what my family had experienced a year back when trying to save the life of my father.
How can I just forget that tragic day when my father became the victim of inefficient and disorganized healthcare system in the country? I along with my parents was visiting our family friends in another city. On our way (Upon reaching Jehlum, GT Road) my father suffered a massive heart attack. He was feeling pain in his legs and lower back. Since it was daytime, around 1:20pm and we were in city, we were optimistic that we will be able to acquire good emergency medial care but It turned out that WE WERE COMPLETELY WRONG.
First, we went to a medical hospital, which apparently looked like an organized building with excellent facade. To my dismay, there was NO medical setup to tackle emergency cases. To make it worst not even a single staff personnel was present at the information/registration counter. After running around finding the staff member and nearly begging in front of them for help, I managed to arrange a bed for my father and after which he was given few injections and medicines. His condition kept deteriorating and the pain seemed not to subside. No doctor was available let alone cardiologist. We decide to arrange an ambulance to shift him to civil hospital, which proved to be even the bigger challenge. Just to hire a single ambulance, we had to rush to get the reference of local political person. No one bothered to care about the immense pain and tension we were going through. This took us about an hour to sort the issue and to get an ill-equipped ambulance.
We then took my father to CMH jehlum. Unfortunately, we were presented with an excuse that there are no beds available. The staff was extremely rude and uncooperative. Since we had no desire to waste our time on arguing with them, we decided to take my father to khaarian CMH hospital but my father died on our way to the hospital (around 4:30pm) leaving us completely helpless
We could have managed to sav my father in these three hours had there been a efficient healthcare system in place. I wonder if people from major cities of our country are facing this situation then rural areas must be at the worse. For me, Healthcare is a total LUXURY, which only few get to enjoy. I feel for everyone out there who has lost his or her loved one due to the flaws of our healthcare system. The pain is so consuming.
I am Pleased to learn about the work UM Trust is doing in order to provide healthcare to needy people in rural areas. My best wishes are with UM Healthcare Trust and may we have others taking likely initiatives.
God bless UM.
Contributed by: Aqib Javed
