Loan schemes for young doctors

LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Specialised Healthcare & Medical Education Khwaja Salman Rafique has directed the Punjab Health Foundation to take immediate steps for launching soft loan and small loan schemes for the young doctors, house officers and senior clinicians for setting up their clinics and purchasing of equipment for the purpose.

The minister also directed that awareness campaign through media should also be carried out to motivate unemployed doctors for setting up clinics. He was of the view that by setting up clinics in the streets, services of qualified doctors would be available to the people and it would be helpful to eradicate quackery.

He stated this while presiding over a meeting of Board of Governors of Punjab Health Foundation, according to a handout issued Thursday. Secretary Specialised Healthcare Najam Ahmed Shah, Special Secretary Dr Sajid Mehmood Chohan, PHF MD Ajmal Bhatti, Prof Ess Muhammad, senior officers from Finance, Population Welfare, Social Welfare Departments and DMD of PHF also attended the meeting. The Board gave approval of increase of salaries of daily wages employees of the foundation and directed that the notification issued by the Finance Department for the salary schedule of daily wages should be followed.

Punjab Health Foundation MD Ajmal Bhatti informed that at present up to Rs700,000 loan is being awarded without property mortgage, on the basis of documents and personal guarantee. He informed that recovery of PHF loans is 100 percent, he informed that soft loan of Rs200,000 is also being offered to nurses and other paramedics for establishing of their setup.

The meeting also reviewed the cases of waiving of amount of surcharge of the loan of such doctors who either died or fell seriously ill. However, the Board advised the PHF to put up these cases in the next meeting along with complete documents proof. Secretary Health Najam Ahmed Shah directed the MD to further accelerate the performance of Punjab Health Foundation. He directed that general practitioners and young doctors should be sensitised regarding the loan schemes of the foundation and for this purpose SMS could be generated by using the data about the GPS available with the health department. A proposal has been discussed in the meeting that PHF would establish urban health centre as a pilot project in the city, for this purpose any dispensary of district set up would be adopted where outpatient department and referral services would be provided. The urban health centre would be attached with a teaching hospital. If the pilot project is succeeded then it would be further replicated and more urban health centres attached with the teaching hospitals would be established.

Rescue: A four-day second course of the Community Actions for Disaster Response Emergency (CADRE) Course for capacity building of District Emergency Officers (DEOs) and Rescue and Safety Officers (RSOs) concluded here at the Emergency Services Academy on Thursday.

Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue-1122) DG presided over the concluding ceremony. He said the basic purpose to conduct such courses was to enhance rescue standards in Punjab. He asked the DEOs and RSOs to follow directions for execution of Community Emergency Response Teams Plan for Year 2018. He stressed the need of self-protection training to counter any untoward situation.

He appreciated the trainers on organising a successful course and directed them to continue organising such capacity building courses. The topics covered in the course included common hazards and the community response group, securing family preparing for response, first aid and basic life support, basic search and rescue, management of fire and water emergencies, incident command system and triage, dead body management followed by practical simulation exercise to assess, analyze and evaluate skills of participants.