THE ministry of health has issued a rejoinder to an editorial, `Misplaced priorities’, which appeared in the Jan 26 issue of Dawn. The editorial had described the `medical tower’ being built at Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) as a project for the elite.
In the rejoinder, the ministry says `by no account is the tower an elitist project’ as only 40 out of 550 beds would be reserved for `private patients’.
The rejoinder says the complex `is being built not only to provide additional beds at the Pims, but also to house a number of important disciplines that are at present non-existent in the institute’.