National Medical Centre / Negligence of doctors

National Medical Centre Reviews & Complaints

By: Ghazal Zahid Khan

Contact information:
National Medical Centre
National Medical Centre, KalaPul Karachi

I am writing this to create awareness about some shocking irregularities and mishandling of patients at the National Medical Centre (NMC) near Kala Pul, Karachi, which led to our beloved father’s death on 30 January, 2018. It is a case of blatant professional negligence on part of three of the hospital’s senior doctors: (1) Dr. Tariq Masood, the cardiologist who bungled up my father’s angioplasty, as a result of which he had to be taken for emergency heart surgery; (2) Dr. Salahuddin Afsar, my father’s regular physician who pressurized him for the angiography in the first place and yet when things got haywire and my father was admitted to the ICU in a critical condition, he refused outright to show up for consultancy; and (3) Dr. Javaid Warind, the visiting pulmonologist who was never available for consultation on time and who was responsible for hastily discharging my father on the night of 12th January from the hospital disregarding signs of pulmonary edema, because of which he quickly developed pneumonia, had to be re-admitted to the ICU and had to spend his last days on the ventilator with a tube through his throat, unable to eat, drink or talk.

We specially want to draw people’s attention towards three major issues: (1) the hospital has little or no permanent /full-time specialist consultants and therefore critical patients suffer considerably while they wait for visiting specialists; (2) the hospital’s ICU is crawling with life-threating infections, putting the already immuno-compromised critical patients at further risk; (3) the doctors in the ICU – everyone from the most senior to the very junior – indulge in the unethical activity of pressurizing the attendants to take their patients home, offering their services for private visits for a fee, and recommending their favoured providers of home ventilators and private nursing staff. We had approached NMC through a letter on 16 February 2018, listing these concerns, asking some questions, and above all, urging them to take action to remedy the above mentioned issues. Unfortunately, no one has responded so far. You can support our cause and/or read in detail about my father’s case on our facebook page titled ‘Karachi Hospitals’ here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/378928149239980/