Steps on to improve condition of govt hospitals, says CM

PESHAWAR: Chief Minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur on Saturday said that the health sector was one of his government’s priority sectors and efforts to strengthen healthcare facilities at grassroots level were underway.

“We want to ensure the efficient and effective use of available medical equipment and human resources in these hospitals with the aim to ensure basic healthcare facilities to the people at local level, thereby reducing the patients load on teaching hospitals,” he told a delegation of Insaf Doctors Forum here.

The chief minister said that efforts were underway to improve the standards of public sector hospitals so that maximum public sector health facilities could be empaneled in the Sehat Card programme to make free healthcare services accessible to people in the province. Gandapur said that steps had been taken to address gaps and loopholes in Sehat Card scheme, prevent its misuse, and enhance its efficiency, adding that these efforts have resulted in significant improvement in free treatment facilities under the scheme.

The delegation discussed with him matters related to the ongoing reforms in the health sector, improvements in service delivery in public sector hospitals and ways to address issues facing the doctor community, said a handout.

The chief minister said that the provincial government was planning to include life insurance schemes in the Sehat Card programme, which he termed, as a unique programme of social protection. The chief minister stated that his government was also planning to establish its own life insurance company to run all its social protection schemes on sustainable grounds. For the first time, he said, bone marrow and liver transplant projects were also being launched in the province.

He said that the provincial government would welcome inputs from the medical community for improvement and reforms in health sectors. He asked the doctors to sit with the quarters concerned of the health department and bring forward doable proposals for integrating emergency and ICU services in all public sector hospitals of the province, and for improving the overall patients care systems in these hospitals for the benefit of patients at large.