Muzaffar Ahmad Shaksaz, 40, was moving from pharmacy to pharmacy to get emergency medicines for his wife diagnosed of miscarriage at Sub District Hospial Seer in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.
However, Shaksaz is denied medicine on the pretext that the prescription of his wife is invalid.
“How can we give you medicine as the prescription you are carrying does not bear a stamp and registration number of the doctor,” Shaksaz quoted the pharmacists as saying.
When he reached out to a doctor working as a medical officer in the hospital for the stamp, she refused arguing that she was not entitled to do so.
Shaksaz finally traveled to Anantnag to fetch medicines but got the pharmacists turned him down with the same excuse.
“My wife was diagnosed of early pregnancy failure in her second month and if she doesn’t get medicines, her condition might deteriorate,” worried Shaksaz said showing the prescription.
The patient bears an ANC registration 124 WBa-Seer and had been receiving treatment at the hospital since March 11.
Shaksaz was also is carrying the visiting card of a chemist and private clinic of Anantnag town with the prescription.
“A chemist at Seer on whose clinic a gynecologist practices handed over a visiting card to me and wrote the phone number of someone and told me to contact him for medicines,” Shaksaz said.
He finally took his wife to Maternity and Child Care Hospital (MCCH) Anantnag where the doctor treated her.
SDH Seer, catering to dozens of villages of Pahalgam and Khovripora, has three gynecologists.
Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Anantnag, DrMukhtar Ahmad admitted that putting a stamp on the prescription was mandatory.
“I would look into the matter,” he said.
However, a senior doctor told Greater Kashmir that even after bearing a valid prescription the patients are denied emergency medicines needed during a miscarriage.
“The chemists should provide the medicines if the prescription is valid, but they are not doing so due to which patients suffer,” he said.
A doctor said that this is black-marketing and points at a nexus between the doctors and pharmacies where these medicines are sold at exorbitant rates.
“One of the medicines prescribed to this the patient is a hospital supply, but despite possessing ANC she has not been even provided that,” he said.