LAHORE: Health Secretary Jawad Rafique Malik says a ban may be imposed on the transfer and posting of medical officers for six months in order to ensure their presence at district hospitals.

Mr Malik at a conference of district health managers on Wednesday, said he had taken notice of vacant positions of medical officers at certain health facilities in districts and warned of stringent action for granting unauthorised leaves to doctors.

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Executive districts officers (EDOs) of health from 36 districts of the province attended the conference where Parliamentary Secretary on Health Khwaja Imran Nazir, Adviser to Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique, Health Director General Dr Zahid Pervaiz, EPI Director Dr Munir Ahmed and UNICEF and WHO representatives were also present.

The Chief Minister Road-map team gave a detailed presentation on a scorecard of performance, including indicators like EPI coverage, saying that Punjab had made considerable improvement over the last few months.

Dr Pervaiz proposed the provision of specialists at tehsil headquarters hospitals in order to ensure filling up vacant positions of medical officers. He added age relaxation could also be considered while appointing the specialist doctors at these health facilities.

Dr Munir emphasised the importance of routine immunisation, saying that from now onwards the progress of districts would be gauged on zero dose and ‘still not available children’ instead of coverage.

He also requested the districts to identify sites for setting up EPI centres. He said civil society organisations and donors would be engaged in maintaining the centres where immunisation-related services would be available to the people.

Cash prizes were distributed among the EDOs of Sahiwal, Attock and Pakpatten for improving health facilities in their districts.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2015

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