PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has said the system under which the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore, is being run will be replicated in government-run hospitals and clinics in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Speaking at a press conference at the Chief Minister House here on Sunday, he said the KP government would set new standards in healthcare that would prove to be a “model” for the rest of the country.

KP’s Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and several provincial ministers were present on the occasion.

Mr Khan said the KP government wanted to turn hospitals into institutions that were based on what he called “the Shaukat Khanum model”.

He highlighted salient features of the province’s health reform project which was introduced early last year.

The PTI chief said an autonomous board ran the Shaukat Khanum hospital in Lahore which provided free healthcare to about 70 per cent of the poor patients.

The government-run hospitals in the province would also be run by autonomous boards because such bodies generally took prompt and judicious decisions.

Giving reasons for delays in implementation of health reforms in the province, Mr Khan said that some stakeholders whose interests had been adversely affected were creating hurdles.

“I admit that there have been delays, but I am confident that people will see a big change in major hospitals in the province soon,” he said.

He said that doctors and paramedical staff were on strike and had got stay orders from the Peshawar High Court. He appealed to the court to dispose of the cases quickly so that the reform package could be implemented soon.

The current budget for the health sector was Rs8 billion in 2011-12 which had been raised to Rs25bn in the new budget, he said. A total of 22,000 posts had been created of which 15,000 were for doctors, nurses and paramedical staff. The posts would be filled in 2016-17.

In the new budget, Mr Khan said, an amount of Rs3bn had been allocated for district headquarter hospitals and Rs4bn for district and tehsil hospitals.

In addition, Rs2bn had been allocated for nine ongoing schemes that would be completed during the next financial year, he said.

He said the “Sehat ka Insaf” card system would facilitate provision of healthcare to around 1.8 million poor families across the province.

The PTI chief again defended allocation of Rs300m in the provincial budget to the Darul Uloom Haqqania in Nowshera, saying the KP government was responsible for providing education to poor children studying in the seminaries.

He said that around 2.2m children were studying in seminaries while about 800,000 students had been enrolled in private English medium schools across the country.

Mr Khan said the management of the seminary was ready to initiate reforms. He maintained that reforms in seminaries were part of the National Action Plan on terrorism.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2016