Shaukat Ali Jawaid
Late Prof. Muhammad Ibrahim who belonged to East Pakistan was a distinguished physician in internal medicine with special interest in Diabetes. He served as Professor of Medicine and Director of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre in Karachi in late 60s. He also established the first ever Diabetic Clinic in Pakistan. Thousands of patients used to get free drugs including insulin at JPMC. He always practiced medicine with a humanistic touch. He was in charge of Ward-5 where later on another distinguished physician par excellence late Prof. S.M. Rab served for many years. After the tragic incident of 1971, Prof. Ibrahim decided to go to East Pakistan and settle there where he established the world’s largest and perhaps the best State of the Art healthcare facility known as” Bangladesh Institute of Research in Rehabilitation for Diabetes, Endocrine & Metabolic Disorders” (BIRDEM) which over the years has emerged as a leading university of health sciences with numerous undergraduate and postgraduate medical institutions. I had the privilege of interviewing him in 1969.
Prof. Ibrahim used to start work every morning at 8.15 AM wherein all the admissions of last twenty four hours used to be discussed. The cases used to be presented by the Registrar or House Officers. Bed side teaching was a routine.1 He had mastered the art of Clinical Skills in which a vast majority of our physicians and particularly the younger generation of healthcare professionals leave much to be desired. They have not been taught the art of history taking and clinical examination which is extremely important to reach the correct diagnosis.
During the morning presentations Prof. Ibrahim used to ask the House Physicians and FCPS Part-II trainees that what is the source of livelihood of your patient? How many children he/she has? What are the living conditions in their house? He used to remind the trainees that “Never see towards the patient as a source of your income. You serve the patient for the sake of Allah Almighty and Allah will take care of your needs, bless you and our family”.1 Alas we did not have many such role models in the later days.
Murder of merit during appointments, selection and promotions paved the way for many deadwood who maneuvered to join the faculty, some on adhoc basis, later got confirmed through agitation and strikes which eventually destroyed what used to be one of the best and premier postgraduate medical institution of the country. Political interference, greedy politicians, ill-trained induction in faculty made the situation from bad to worse. Had it not been due to the heroic efforts of Prof. I. H. Bhatti, Prof. Tariq Mahmood and his colleagues in Patients Aid Foundation, Prof. Hassan Aziz, generous donations by philanthropists which went a long way to improve, expand and strengthen various services, departments, it would have been reduced to just a district hospital. However, the political infighting between the faculty members, professional jealousies, intrigues by some has done immense harm to this great institution.
At present it suffers from acute shortage of well trained, experienced faculty since due to court cases and other later developments, fresh recruitment, selection and appointment is halted. An institution is only as good as its faculty, the standard cannot be judged from the buildings and other infrastructure alone. First there used to complaints that it is being run and managed through remote control from Islamabad and later when after the 18th constitutional amendment health and education became a provincial subject, it did not solve the problems the difficulties faced by JPMC.
There was a time in the 60s when the best physicians and surgeons used to be in the faculty of JPMC but gone are those days. Under the present circumstances since the Federal Government has been left with very little resources with major junk being distributed among the province, no federal government in future irrespective of the fact which party forms the government in the Centre, will be willing to provide the required funding for JPMC and other institutions like NICH and NICVD which had remained under the control of federal government.
Hence, sooner or later something need to be done to ensure that JPMC has faculty which is selected on merit based on their talent, competence, experience and expertise rather than any other considerations. The politicians should have some mercy and don’t further destroy an institution named after the father of the Nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, they could not save the country which he and his companions gave us.
REFERENCE
- From Prison to Sitara-i-Imtiaz. The Tale of My Life and Time. An autobiography by Prof. Eice Muhammad. 2024. Page 60 & 70.
