Ex-civil servant selected KPHCC chairman

PESHAWAR: The newly-appointed members of the Board of Governors (BoG) during their maiden meeting on Wednesday selected former civil servant Dr Ikram Ghani as chairman and Dr Syed Abdus Sabooh as vice chairman of the board of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Healthcare Commission (KPHCC).

Health Secretary Syed Imtiaz Hussain Shah represented the Health department in the meeting. Other members of the BoG, Dr Lubna Hasan, Dr Sabina Aziz, Asmat Gul Khattak, Director General Pakistan Accreditation Council, Saima Akbar Khattak, Chief Pharmacist Abid Hayat, Deputy Secretary Home Kashif Qayyum Khattak, and former secretary Communications and Works Adam Khan also attended the meeting.

The board members discussed various issues related to the KPHCC and Dr Ikram Ghani vowed that all available resources would be used for making it a result-oriented body. He said they would soon chalk out a strategy and would launch a comprehensive crackdown on quacks playing with the lives of the people. Chief Executive KPHCC Dr Maqsood Ali Khan presented a progress report of the past 10 months and briefed the BoG members about objectives of the commission. He spoke about registration, inspection and monitoring of health outlets. Dr Maqsood Ali Khan told the BoG members that they had launched a one-window operation in Peshawar, Abbottabad, Mansehra, Timergara, Swat, and Bannu to provide registration certificates to doctors and hakims. This process, he said, enabled thousands of health practitioners to register themselves and their outlets with KPHCC. He said they also continued a crackdown on quakes and illegal and ill-equipped diagnostic services in the province.