PESHAWAR, Jan 15: Doctors here called for strengthening of the health-care system at the district level, where people are provided information on diseases that are preventable.

“We need funds for repair, whitewash and maintenance of the BHUs and dispensaries, which are not forthcoming. The district government had allocated Rs1.5 million this year which fell well short of the actual demand,” said Mosam Khan, executive health officer, Peshawar district, at a one-day seminar entitled “Strengthening The District Health System — Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Practice.”

The seminar was arranged by the health department in collaboration with Abaseen Foundation here on Tuesday.

A large number of doctors, drawn from the district health facilities of the province, attended it, and shared their experience.

Dr Iqbal Khalil, Naib Nazim city district council, said the prevalent health-care system needed overhaul to make it patient-friendly.

He said the patients suffered at the hospitals. He appreciated the MMA government’s announcement regarding provision of free emergency treatment to the critically ill.

According to him, the IBP was another blow to the health delivery system, because it paved the way for corruption at the government-run hospitals.

“The poor don’t benefit from this, and their woes have rather increased,” he noted, adding that he had himself seen people die for want of treatment at the government-administered hospitals.

He said such policies should be pursued as could be implemented practically. He urged the policy-makers to formulate realistic policies.

Dr Abdul Hamid Afridi, programme manager, Expanded Programme On Immunization, was of the view that the people should be educated to immunize their children and newborn babies, so that they were saved from dangerous but preventable diseases like measles and polio.

He informed that an international NGO, formed by Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, had approved 80 per cent of its total donation to Pakistan. The amount, he said, would be spent on the vaccination of children against Hepatitis B and $20 would be incurred on every new entry, of which $10 would be offered to the EPI workers as an incentive.

Dr Afridi said Pakistan has to eradicate polio by the year 2005. There were a total of 57 high-risk districts in the country, where extra efforts would be made to overcome the menace.

He said EPI workers faced problems due to lack of facilities, but still they worked dedicatedly and carried out door-to-door visits to vaccinate children against polio.

Dr Abdul Ghafoor, controller TB programme, said that patients afflicted with TB should be sensitised to continue their treatment for nine months under the WHO’s DOTS programme.

According to him, 35,000 new cases of TB were registered every year in the NWFP which should cause alarm. The patients, he said, used the drugs without consulting the doctors which multiplied their problems.

Earlier, Gulman Sher Afridi, chairman of the Abaseen Foundation, said they had been running a satellite centre at Nahaqi under public-private partnership with the government and had provided health facilities to 73,053 persons.