PESHAWAR July 6: Director-general of health Dr Jalilur Rehman has stressed the need for giving priority to health management and health planning sector in order to ensure better utilization of funds.

"There is a dire need to develop the interaction among skilled health professionals as it was the pre-requisite for better hospital administration," said Dr Rehman during his address on the inaugural ceremony of postgraduate diploma courses in health and hospital administration at the Abasyn Institute of Management Sciences (Aims) here on Tuesday.

Dr Rehman said that this course was need of the hour given the fact that we had the potential, but we can utilize it for problem solving if we had better education in health management.

Hospitals are the most complex organizations and interpersonal skills would be helpful to run its affairs in a better way, he added. The DG health assured the institution to provide all facilities in its diploma programme.

The nine-month diploma which will start from this month was offered by Gomal University Dera Ismail Khan and has been divided into two semesters, including contemporary lectures, case studies, interactive sessions, web casts, problem-oriented training and computer based training.

Speakers on the occasion said that 83 per cent of the public sector hospitals and 60 per cent of private sector hospitals were being mismanaged in Pakistan, whereas 94 per cent of the public sector and 55 per cent of the health sector managers were not formally trained in the field of health and hospital administration.

They added that only six per cent of public and 45 per cent of private hospitals had trained health managers while 83 per cent of public and 60 per cent of private hospitals were did not fulfil the requirement.