RAWALPINDI, June 23: The Punjab government is planning to cut the population growth rate in the province to 1.8 per cent by the next year, an official source said here on Monday.

The official said the Punjab government’s health and population strategy was aimed at creating a healthy population and containing the growth rate.

“The government is targeting to reduce this rate to 1.6 per cent by the year 2012,” he added.

The source said population welfare programme coverage would also be enhanced to 76 per cent by the next year and 100 per cent by 2012.

About the health care system, he admitted that the system provided inadequate coverage to the population in terms of both quality and quantity. However, the health department is committed to improve the coverage of preventive health needs, he added.

The source said an additional amount of Rs10 billion would be spent annually over and above the relevant year’s health budget for improving the condition of health care facilities in the public sector and increasing people’s access to population welfare programmes. The government is planning to recruit 5,000 medical personnel over the next year, he added.

Similarly, he said, plans are afoot to train and retrain medical and paramedical staff to enhance their professional competence.

About the enhancement of health care facilities, the official said primary health care outlets would be reinforced with special focus on improving health services for rural areas and urban slums and to address the health care needs of the urban poor, especially the female population. Through strengthening the secondary and tertiary health care facilities, the health department is aiming at establishing a proper referral system, he added.

He said non-salary budget allocations for teaching hospitals had been enhanced to Rs400 per bed per day from the previous rate of Rs120. The operation theatres of these hospitals are also being upgraded for which an amount of Rs2 billion has been allocated, he added.

“Emergency care will be provided at all levels of health care outlets.”

The official said the government was considering to transfer the management of underutilized and unutilized health facilities to NGOs, local bodies and private sector under a public-private partnership programme.

Advocating the public-private partnership in the health sector, he said operations of the grass roots level health care facilities had been problematic and the health department was now looking to experiment different strategies for finding solutions to the longstanding problems.