May 27, 2008	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 21, 1429

KARACHI, May 26: The Sin-dh government is working on a plan to induct 11,000 doctors, nurses, technical staff and paramedics in the health department for various health care facilities across the province.

This was stated by Sindh Health Minister Dr Saghir Ahmad while talking to a gathering of newsmen from the print and electronic media on Monday. The minister said he realised that there was a dire need to ensure availability of doctors at various hospitals and health units both in the urban and rural areas.

He said that a number of health care facilities developed with huge public money were still either to be commissioned or were performing below the desired standard due to shortage of general and specialised cadre doctors, nurses and technical persons.

He said that sanctioned new expenditures pertaining to about 4,000 doctors and other staff had already been approved by the relevant authorities while work was in progress for sanctioned new expenditures of about 7,000 medical staffers.

He said the government wanted that doctors, either already working or likely to be recruited, should discharge their duties at their original places of postings in order to improve the health care delivery system particularly in the rural areas.

The minister said he personally felt that efforts should be made to utilise the existing health care facilities at the optimum, instead of going for new development works. “We have buildings without doctors, which needed to be addressed on a priority basis,” he observed.

Replying to a question, Dr Ahmed said the issue of appointment of doctors in general and specialised cadres as well as nurses on a contract basis, which was initiated last year by the previous government and later on by the caretaker government, could be re-evaluated, if needed.

He said that the health department believed in improving its working on the curative, preventive and administrative fronts so that both in rural and urban areas people could be provided with affordable healthcare facilities.

The annual development budget of the government was likely to be raised up to Rs3,000 million in the coming financial year, he added.

The minister told a questioner that a regular medical superintendent for the Civil Hospital Karachi would be posted in the first week of June. About the proposed trauma centre, he said, a site had already been finalised where it would be established on a fast track as the city urgently needed such a centre to cater to the needs of accidents and emergency patients.