{"id":4637,"date":"2025-07-09T19:24:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T19:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/2025\/07\/09\/shifa-hospital-lawmakers-testimonies\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T19:36:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T19:36:37","slug":"shifa-hospital-lawmakers-testimonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/2025\/07\/09\/shifa-hospital-lawmakers-testimonies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThis Is Not Compassion \u2014 It\u2019s Business\u201d: Lawmakers Expose Shifa Hospital\u2019s Practices in Heart-Wrenching Personal Testimonies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis Is Not Compassion \u2014 It\u2019s Business\u201d: Lawmakers Expose Shifa Hospital\u2019s Practices in Heart-Wrenching Personal Testimonies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nadeem Tanoli<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Islamabad \u2014\u00a0Shifa International Hospital, long considered one of the capital\u2019s most elite medical institutions, is now at the center of a storm of criticism after multiple lawmakers recounted deeply personal, distressing experiences of medical neglect, financial exploitation, and ethical lapses. During a recent session of the National Assembly\u2019s Sub-Committee on Health, committee members laid bare what they described as \u201ca business model disguised as care\u201d \u2014 and demanded sweeping reforms.<\/p>\n

The session opened with a harrowing account by Dr. Amjad Ali Khan, the committee\u2019s convener, who recalled how Shifa refused to release his deceased mother\u2019s body in 2015 until the outstanding bill was guaranteed. \u201cMy mother had just passed away. I was Out of Country, and my younger brother was at the hospital. The administration said, \u2018you cannot take the dead body out until you pay.\u2019\u201d With no other option, Dr. Amjad had to contact a classmate at the hospital to personally guarantee the payment before the body was released. \u201cThis is my personal story,\u201d he told the committee, adding that it proves the public perception of private hospitals holding bodies hostage over bills is not only real \u2014 it happened to him.<\/p>\n

Following this emotional revelation came the haunting testimony of Dr. Zahra Wadood Fatemi, who detailed a traumatic experience involving a brain-dead family acquaintance kept on a ventilator at Shifa for an entire week. The man, an accountant, had been declared brain-dead at PIMS but was transferred to Shifa upon his son’s insistence. Despite confirming there was \u201cnothing left,\u201d Shifa admitted and kept the patient \u2014 charging up to Rs. 100,000 per day. \u201cI was paying out of my own pocket,\u201d Dr. Zahra said. \u201cThey were being cruel to this body \u2014 \u2018zulm kar rahe hain is body ke saath.\u2019\u201d She confronted the doctors, begging them to explain the reality to the grieving son. \u201cI told them, \u2018He is no more. Why are you doing this?\u2019\u201d But the hospital refused to act without family consent, prolonging the agony. Only after she “put her foot down” and told them she could not pay anymore did the staff agree to withdraw life support. \u201cI have never gone back to Shifa after that. That incident is burned into my memory,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

MNA Dr. Shazia Sobia Aslam Soomro, another member, added her voice with a damning account of Shifa\u2019s emergency protocols. She recalled rushing her critically ill aunt, suffering from sepsis and a BP of 60\/40, to the hospital \u2014 only to be told that no treatment, not even checking vitals, would be provided until a payment slip and MR number were completed. \u201cThis was a matter of life and death,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just unethical, it\u2019s inhuman.\u201d She also criticized the hospital\u2019s ICU, stating bluntly that its quality was \u201cnot very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite these disturbing narratives, Shifa\u2019s Chief Operating Officer, Taimur Shah, defended the hospital\u2019s practices. He said that under his leadership since 2019, Shifa has enforced a \u201cno questions asked\u201d emergency treatment policy and never withholds bodies \u2014 instead relying on promissory notes. But lawmakers made clear that lived experiences told a different story. Dr. Amjad\u2019s incident directly contradicted the claim. Dr. Shazia\u2019s account dismissed the emergency policy as hollow. And Dr. Zahra\u2019s ordeal raised critical ethical concerns about the hospital\u2019s failure to act firmly when life had clearly ended, forcing a grieving family to finance suffering.<\/p>\n

The committee also scrutinized Shifa for its failure to secure a final license, operating only under provisional registration with the Islamabad Healthcare Regulatory Authority (IHRA). Partial inspections of its blood bank and radiology unit had occurred \u2014 but a comprehensive audit of the entire hospital has never taken place. The committee expressed outrage, calling this a failure of regulation and a danger to public trust.<\/p>\n

Shifa\u2019s pricing model also came under fire. Lawmakers highlighted how the hospital charges Rs. 2,000 for a basic CBC test, compared to Rs. 300 elsewhere. Shah justified this with \u201cactivity-based costing,\u201d citing high equipment and operational costs. But the explanation was dismissed by the committee, which plans to form a Price Determination Committee under IHRA to control such exploitative practices.<\/p>\n

Shah claimed Shifa treats 800\u20131,000 patients daily through its charitable Shifa Foundation. He listed multiple audits, including financial audits by BDO, quality audits under JCI, and environmental audits due to World Bank involvement. However, lawmakers argued that branding and certifications do not replace state accountability, especially when real families are being financially and emotionally drained in moments of deepest vulnerability.<\/p>\n

The Sub-Committee vowed to push for mandatory clinical and financial audits, strict licensing enforcement, and penalties for hospitals that delay care or exploit grief for profit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis Is Not Compassion \u2014 It\u2019s Business\u201d: Lawmakers Expose Shifa Hospital\u2019s Practices in Heart-Wrenching Personal Testimonies Nadeem Tanoli Islamabad \u2014\u00a0Shifa International Hospital, long considered one of the capital\u2019s most elite medical institutions, is now at the center of a storm of criticism after multiple lawmakers recounted deeply personal, distressing experiences of medical neglect, financial exploitation, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,94],"tags":[1632,1174,1199,727,1631,1447,1629,1626,1630,1628],"class_list":["post-4637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-education","category-pakistan","tag-endmedicalexploitation","tag-healthcareaccountability","tag-healthcommitteepakistan","tag-hospitalregulation","tag-ihraaudit","tag-islamabadhospitals","tag-medicalnegligencepakistan","tag-patientrightspakistan","tag-privatehospitalreform","tag-shifahospitalcontroversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4637"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4643,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4637\/revisions\/4643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}