PESHAWAR: Suburban health units face funds shortage
By Our Correspondent
PESHAWAR, July 18: Lack of funds is affecting the performance of the health units located on the city outskirts, officials said.
"We have 110 units, including civil hospitals, basic health units and rural health centres ... in city suburbs, but only Rs800,000 have been allocated for medicines, which translates to only six rupees (being spent) for medicines for every patient," a source in the district health office said.
Last year, he said, the government had allocated Rs5.5million, while the budget for the first quarter of the current fiscal year was only Rs3 million, adding that the bulk of the budget (Rs8.5million) was consumed by staff salaries.
He said that the staff including 120 doctors and 875 paramedical workers, nurses and class-IV staff. Last year, he said, more than 800,000 patients visited OPDs of these health units, adding that they were also provided diagnosis and treatment facilities, official said.
Officials said that the maintenance and repair of instruments was a big problem, affecting patients and health workers alike. He said that most of the residential flats The residential quarters in most of the facilities needed repair for which funds weren't available, official said.
"We have requested the government (to sanction) Rs6million for repairs ... to further activate these facilities. We can accommodate doctors there but they are reluctant to live there because of their being in bad shape," an official said, adding that the living quarters wear a deserted look as they had not been repaired since 1996.
He said that the executive district officer (health) received funds amounting to only Rs1.5 million for the repair work of the living units, which would be spent on the repair of only eight of them.
The official termed the salary structure flawed and said that it was not encouraging doctors to work in these health facilities, adding that they were getting lesser salaries than their counterparts working in teaching hospitals.
"Most of these facilities are located outside residential areas (and) remain inaccessible to patients. This also creates problems regarding staff protection," he said. No new health facility had been built during the past two years, while the number of patients is increasing day by day, he said.
Employees, he said, constantly faced shortage of water, electricity and lack of sanitation and transport facilities, adding that it was affecting their performance as well. An official said that recently work had been initiated to upgrade some of the BHUs but the main hurdle in this regard was the non-availability of funds.
