LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf MNA Malik Ahmad Husain Deharr has criticised Chief Minister Usman Buzdar for not sanctioning four mobile health units to treat hepatitis patients in his constituency in Multan.

Speaking at World Water Day function at Governor’s House on Friday, Mr Deharr said earlier he was at the chief minister’s secretariat only to be told that it was not possible to hand him over mobile units. He said he was ready to share his funds “... but hitches are not being removed”.

“I also met the primary healthcare department secretary. He acknowledged my ambitious plan but added chief minister’s approval is needed,” he said, and lamented “And, I’m an MNA”. Mr Deharr is an MNA from NA-154 (Multan-I).

Explaining his reasons to run after mobile units, he said every sixth or seventh person in his constituency was a hepatitis patient. He said that he had been spent from his own pocket in the last three years on the treatment of the people and “1,000 hepatitis patients have been cured”.

Mr Deharr said that he would give his Rs150 million funds to the health department’s non-lapsable account for the salary of doctors, medicines and other overheads for the next four years.

Once succeeded, the MNA said, he would send each of the mobile healthcare unit to slums and villages, on a rotation of 10 days. Patients would be given medicines there are then. He called the whole plan him dream. The MNA also said that he as a PPP MPA from 2008-13 set up 63 filtration plants, and of them said, only three units were functional. Later, he told Dawn, he also met Special Assistant to Prime Minister Naeemul Haq and Prime Miniser’s spokesman Nadeem Afzal Chan but all in vain.

“If I cannot do anything worthwhile for my voters, who are dying because of arsenic water and hepatitis, what is my importance to be here in this position,” he said.

“I will also raise this issue in the National Assembly and if not accepted I will walk-out,” he asserted.

Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid said the government had 20 mobile healthcare units being operated by a private company (MediUrge) on a contract of Rs3 million per month cost. The department retrieved six of those and put them on a test-run to assess whether the company was getting due cost or not. “We’ve operated the units on a cost of around Rs900,000 per month,” she said.

Dr Yasmin said two of these six mobile healthcare units were being run in Lahore, one in Multan and another would soon be operated in Bahawalpur’s slum areas. She said the private company had currently suspended the operation of remaining 14 units under its custody.

She said the health department had also procured 20 more smaller mobile diagnostic health units out of which 12 had been arrived. However, these were yet to be handed over to the health department, she added.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2019