Minister stresses focus on rural health centres

LAHORE: Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid while emphasising the need for concrete and long lasting health policy has said focus on rural health centres is crucial for Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

She was addressing an inaugural session of consultative workshop on development of national health policy and provincial strategic framework here on Thursday. “Pakistan was facing lack of health facilities, particularly rural areas were badly neglected in the past,” she noted. The minister said conducting such workshops was a milestone in engineering new health policy.

“Pakistan was facing double burden of diseases, the burden is higher in the poor, and many of these condition can be controlled at relatively low cost intervention and best practices through primary and secondary care level,” she said.

Moreover, she said health system faces challenges of vertical service delivery structure in low performance accountability within the government, creating efficiency and quality issues. “Largely unregulated for quality care and pricing there was also duplication of services for the private sector, also the public sector is inadequately staffed and job satisfaction and work environment needs improvement,” she regretted. She suggested that pyramid of medical facilities should be reversed and time has come to focus on rural areas with a fresh political will. “Imran Khan always worried about health facilities and he wanted to start the process of change with the improvement of health facilities,” said that minister.

She also mentioned the complications due to climate change and regretted that man himself was responsible for disturbing the mother nature. “Smog was an example of such complications,” she concluded.