Shahbaz vows to get rid of obsolete system

Agreement signed with Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital Trust to run Kidney Hospital Multan; says no politics allowed in health sector

LAHORE: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif vowed to change the  healthcare system, as the Punjab government and Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital Trust on Wednesday signed an agreement on the management of the Kidney Hospital Multan.

“This is an obsolete system which will be changed at all costs,” he said at the signing ceremony of the agreement under which the control of 150-bed Kidney Hospital Multan has been handed over to Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif said the Indus Group was running the Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital, Muzaffargarh, in an excellent manner, adding that the facility had become an example of excellent performance not only in southern Punjab but also the whole country.

He asked everyone to join hands to make Pakistan a great country according to the dreams of Allama Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam “where everybody gets equal rights”. According to a handout, Shahbaz said the Indus Group was also managing another hospital near Lahore at Ladhar, where it served patients from Kasur and Sheikhupura. He said the Kidney Hospital Multan constructed at a cost Rs2 billion was fully equipped and would start providing best medical services to patients by June.

He said the Punjab government had inaugurated first hepatitis filter clinic two weeks ago at Pakistan Kidney and Liver Transplant Institute which was also being run by a trust comprising philanthropists and renowned surgeons. The provincial government provided funds but changed the management model, he added.

The chief minister mentioned the politics and lack of services for patients at some hospitals which also witness strikes regularly despite trillions of rupees spent on health sector during the last 70 years.

The nation made them doctors with its hard earned money but the “poor man does not get medical help and medicine”, he remarked. The chief minister said Pakistan was not established for that and that’s the reason he had to take a difficult decision. “This model will be extended to entire Punjab to provide medical treatment to the distressed humanity, even if there are thousands of strikes and taunts of privatisation,” he promised.

The chief minister said people would reject the negative politics as the common man, on one hand, did not get medicines and, on the other, there was politics. “There will be no strike in the hospitals which have been handed over to the Indus Group and no patient will be refused treatment,” he said, adding, “The common man will get treatment which is his right.”

“There is no room for those who do politics for creating misunderstanding,” he said, adding, “It is a game changer and will prove to be a big milestone in healthcare system.” “Now new hospitals will not be constructed with bricks and cement,” he said and added that the facilities would run under public-private partnership in order to provide free treatment to the people.  

Answering the questions of the media, the chief minister said all-out efforts were being made to provide standardised medical facilities at hospitals. “This is an evolutionary process and it will take time but I am confident that we will succeed,” he remarked.