KP CM wants free medicines in hospitals ensured

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan on Tuesday directed the officials of the Health Department to ensure the provision of free-of-cost medicines and presence of doctors in all the primary and secondary hospitals in four-week time.

Chairing a meeting here, the chief minister also directed that the problems related to management and administration of the hospitals should also be resolved on priority basis. The government would provide better healthcare facilities to the people in the hospitals, he said, adding, under the Local Government Act, the procedure for releasing funds to the health facilities had been simplified.

The chief minister asked the officials of the Health Department to improve the health delivery system at the basic health units and dispensaries so that people could get better treatment facilities.

He called for launching the Sehat Insaf Card scheme in the seven newly merged tribal districts and approved national health reform package for the districts to be implemented in the six-month time.

Earlier, the chief minister was given a detailed briefing about the health sector. He agreed with the proposal of establishing 500 primary health units in rural areas and upgrading of the district headquarters hospitals in the next five years. The meeting was informed that 50,300 lady health workers were performing duty in the health sector and 90 percent process for immunisation of children had been completed.

The meeting was told that 874 BHUs and 120 secondary hospitals had been made functional across the province. The meeting was attended by Minister for Finance Taimoor Salim Jhagra, Minister for Health Hisham Inamullah Khan, Minister for Information Shaukat Yousafzai, Chief Secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, Additional Chief Secretary Shahzad Bangash and others.