Mother and child hospitals being set up across Punjab: CM

LAHORE: Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has said that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government is determined to provide quality healthcare facilities to mother and child, and it has started work on setting up state-of-the-art hospitals in this regard across the province. In a statement issued here on Sunday he said that the mother and child hospitals were also being set up in the remote districts of Punjab.

A 600-bed mother and child hospital in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and a 200-bed such hospital in Multan were being constructed. Such hospitals were also being established in Mianwali, Rajanpur, Layyah, Attock, Bahawalnagar, Dera Ghazi Khan and Sialkot, the CM said. Usman Buzdar said that the former government had not constructed a single mother and child hospital in the last 10 years.

They were fond of self-exhibitory projects, and used to get personal medical treatment abroad. That was why they did not build a single such hospital in the province where they could get quality and modern healthcare facilities for themselves.

The CM said the PTI government adopted a uniform policy for providing quality healthcare facilities under which Nishtar-II hospital was being set up in Multan, Shaikh Zayed Hospital-II in Rahim Yar Khan and Cardiology Institute in DG Khan.

Also, emergency wards of public hospitals were being upgraded in Rahim Yar Khan, Sargodha and Bahawalpur. The Thalassaemia Unit and Bone-Marrow Transplant Centre of Bahawalpur Victoria Hospital are also being upgraded.

New state-of-the-art District Headquarters Hospital is being established in Chiniot, Hafizabad and Chakwal besides setting up cardiology units in Bahawalnagar and DHQ Bhakkar.

Cardiology unit was being upgraded at Sahiwal Teaching Hospital. Institute of Urology was near completion in Rawalpindi. Wah THQ is being awarded a status of DHQ and Taxila THQ is also being upgraded, the CM said.

Haseeb Shaheed General Hospital will be completed next year in Faisalabad. There is a plan to set up 40 new trauma centers across the province besides making 26 existing non-functional trauma centers functional, the CM said.

He said that the PTI government recruited 32,000 doctors and paramedical staff in two-and-a-half years whereas former rulers recruited only 18,000 in their first three years.