Health sector: Billions spent on medical care, says CM

LAHORE: The Punjab government has spent billions of rupees on the health sector and provision of modern treatment facilities to patients over the last four and a half years, said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday.

This spending has included substantial raises for doctors and reforms to their service structure, as well as on the setting up of new colleges and hospitals, said the chief minister at a meeting with health officials in Model Town, according to a press statement. “Now it is the responsibility of doctors to serve the ailing humanity with commitment and dedication,” Sharif said.

He noted that poor patients at government hospitals received free medicines. Air-conditioners had been installed in general wards at a cost of Rs2 billion. A 410-bed hospital in Bahawalpur was almost finished, new hospitals were being built in Sargodha and Lodhran, and a kidney centre was being built in Multan, he said. Cardiac surgeries had been started at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, he said, “a state-of-the-art hospital that is even better than the Punjab Institute of Cardiology.”

The chief minister said that the provision of healthcare to the people was not a favour by the government, but their right. Senior doctors must spare no effort in their service, he said, and must ensure the provision of free medicines. They must maintain discipline and performance at hospitals, he said, adding that they would have to be more active to do so.

Senior doctors at the meeting presented various proposals to the chief minister to improve healthcare system.

The chief minister said that the Punjab government had also made untiring efforts to improve the education sector and law and order.

Senator Pervaiz Rasheed, Special Assistant to the Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique, Parliamentary Health Secretary Dr Saeed Elahi, the health secretary, vice chancellors of medical universities, principals of teaching hospitals, medical superintendents and senior professors attended the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2013.