PESHAWAR, June 11: The NWFP government would allocate more amount in the budget for the year 2003-04 to upgrade district headquarters hospitals, officials said.

“The DHQ hospital in 16 districts are being upgraded with a view to providing health-care facilities to the people within their own districts. This would also reduce the burden on the hospitals in the city, because most of the patients are presently being transported to the city’s hospitals for lack of diagnostic facilities and specialist doctors,” said the official.

Upgradation work has already been initiated in seven districts, including Shangla, Tank, Dir Upper, Dir Lower, Chitral, D.I. Khan and Kohat, whereas work in Haripur, Abbottabad, Kohistan, Mansehra, Charsadda, Nowshera, Mardan, etc., would start shortly. Bannu district will get new hospital while construction work on the second phase of Mardan medical complex would also get under way, he said.

Not only construction, equipments, staff, such as doctors, nurses and paramedics would be provided to these hospitals from the development budget.

The requirements of these hospital could also be met from the World Bank loan of Rs3.2 billion to be extended to the province under the Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC) programme over a period of next three years.

Additional staff had already been provided to the DHQ, Charsadda and Haripur in October last year.

The official said that the government had started the process of establishing DHQs in every district of the province and strengthening of the RHCs, BHUs and dispensaries in early 90s, but it could not deliver the goods, largely owing to the meagre allocations and lack of political commitment on the part of the successive governments.

The official said that some of the hospitals, like Charsadda, Haripur and Kohistan, state-of-the-art equipments have already been purchased, while the rest would get similar equipments very soon.