Lahore May 23: For the first time the provincial government is allocating a sum of Rs10 million each to teaching hospitals for research. Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi said this at the ground-breaking ceremony of the building of the Services Institute of Medical Sciences in the Services Hospital here on Tuesday.

He said funds in this regard would be allocated in the forthcoming budget. He said that a subject of medical ethics had been introduced in the MBBS course for better training of medical students.

The chief minister said that provision of better health facilities to the people of the province was the top priority of the government. To ensure the availability of doctors in the rural areas, he said the government had launched a health sector reforms programme at a cost of Rs6.5 billion. Besides the other facilities, a salary of Rs28,000 is being given to a doctor serving in a basic or rural health unit, he said.

Pervaiz Elahi said that a sum of Rs1.5 billion each had been given to 11 teaching hospitals in the province for upgrading their emergency services. Doctors working in emergencies are being paid double salaries, he said.

He said the experiment to launch an emergency ambulance services project in Lahore was a success and it was being started in five other cities as well. An academy for the training of the emergency staff is also being set up in Lahore, he added.

The chief minister directed the authorities concerned to make the SIMS building functional by Aug 14 next year. It’s estimated cost is Rs1.24 billion.

He also announced MRI and CT Scan machines for the Services Hospital and a grant of Rs5 million for a library in the SIMS and increase the number of students from 90 to 150.

SIMS board of management chairman Humayun Faiz Rasool, principal Dr Faisal Masood, project director Muhammad Saeed Khokhar also spoke.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Association of Urological Surgeons has hailed the announcement of allocation of funds to the teaching hospitals for research.