Karachi facing acute shortage of medico-legal officers

KARACHI: Provincial capital and economic backbone of Pakistan Karachi is facing acute shortage of medico-legal officers for last one year, sources told Geo News.

A senior official of Sindh health department on condition of anonymity said that the city is running without a Police Surgeon for aforementioned period.

The official said that medico-legal officers were facing issues such as harassment and threats from different political groups as well as pressure from the government.

According to the provincial health department, there should be ten medico-legal officers in each tertiary hospital but in reality, only four hospitals including Jinnah, Civil, Abbasi Shaheed and Qatar have medico-legal officers.

The health department has sanctioned 35 vacancies for the post out of which only 15 posts are filled.

Similarly, woman medico-legal officers’ sanctioned posts are ten out of which six are still vacant.

Dr Jalil Qadir, Ex-Police Surgeon of Karachi, said that ideally there should be at least four women and six male medico-legal officers in every hospital but doctors are not taking up the job due to the circumstances of the city.

He said that non-availability of women medico-legal officers was also becoming a big issue as most families do not allow a male officer to perform the post-mortem of their female relative.

Upon contact, newly appointed Sindh Health Minister Dr Sikander Ali Mehndro said he will resolve these issues very soon by appointing doctors from public service commission.