PESHAWAR: In order to properly address apprehensions of the medical community regarding the much-publicised Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical and Teaching Institutions Reforms Act 2015, Dr Nausherawan Burki has finally decided to personally hold meetings with the doctors and other health employees and remove their concerns about the proposed reforms in health sector. Dr Nausherawan is a prominent physician and is chairman of the Board of Governors (BoG) of Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) Peshawar. He is stated to be the man behind the efforts for introducing reforms in the public sector hospitals of the province. Dr Nausherawan Burki would visit Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) on Monday and would address two separate seminars to interact with the doctors and other hospital staff members and answer their questions about the Act. The decision Dr Burki to visit medical and teaching institutions and address apprehensions of the doctors, paramedics, nurses and other staff after Health Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai and officials of the Health Department had stopped ownership of reforms process. The lack of ownership hobbled efforts made for success of reforms.Health Minister Shahram Tarakai is stated to have been harassed by a group of doctors through protest rallies and suspending health services in the public sector hospitals. The medical fraternity wanted answers to their queries about different issues in the Reforms Act from senior authorities in the Health Department.Most of the people had great expectations from the proposed reforms and hoped it would improve hospital affairs as well as patient care. However, some of the people in the bureaucracy, health department as well as in the medical community from day one had started opposing the reforms on different grounds.Beside others, the medical and hospital directors, appointed for an interim period, for LRH, KTH and HMC, also started opposing the health reforms and instead of convincing their fellow doctors about the merits of these reforms, they worked against the Act.Some officials of the health departments and directors of hospitals even helped those wanted to challenge the Reforms Act in the court and guided them about loopholes in it.
