KARACHI: City govt, PMA to work on master health plan
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, April 24: The city government is actively considering a proposal for preparing a master health plan for the city in collaboration with the Karachi chapter of Pakistan Medical Association, it was reliably learnt. According to sources, City Nazim Niamatullah Khan has already asked the officials concerned to allocate Rs3 million for the proposed health plan in the city government next financial year budget.
The master health plan, according to the nazim’s coordinator for health, Dr Fayyaz Alam, is aimed at encouraging professionals and philanthropists to set up rehabilitation centres for psychiatric patients, besides trauma centres and hospitals having speciality in psychiatric, paediatrics, organ transplantation, dialysis facilities and geriatrics, as these facilities are too limited for a population of about 15 million.
As per aims and objectives of the proposed plan, he said, the unplanned mushroom growth of hospitals would be discouraged and action would be taken against quacks whose number in the city has already assumed an alarming proportion of over 30,000.
He further said the city government would organize a seminar by the end of current month to elicit opinion of medical professionals, architects, town planners, non-governmental organizations and general public on the proposed city’s master health plan.
He said that the matter had already been discussed with PMA Karachi President Dr Shershah Syed and the latter had not only agreed to cooperate with the city government in this regard but had also assured that the PMA would be providing ‘Vision 2020’ for the proposed master health plan.
Expressing concern over the prevailing poor state of affairs in health sector, Dr Fayyaz Alam said that although the Sindh government had set up a trauma centre near Karachi University, the same was sold to a non-governmental organization for Rs50 million in 2001.
“Isn’t it shocking that on the one hand, there is only one major hospital i.e. National Institute for Child Health in public sector and that too was functioning under the control of Islamabad.
‘‘On the other hand, the North Karachi’s children hospital is facing acute shortage of doctors, paramedics and technical staff as its SNE has not yet been approved by the Sindh government despite the fact that hospital’s approval was granted during the second tenure of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and which became operational about two years back,” he said.
“At present, the hospital which is set up in a two-storied building is catering to the needs of only out-door-patients with only one doctor who has been transferred there from another hospital,” he added.
