QUETTA: The Balochistan government will provide free stents for 500 deserving patients in two hospitals of Quetta.

Provincial Health Minister Mir Rehmat Saleh Baloch said at a ceremony held to inaugurate the provision of stents and other items worth Rs250,000 each to the deserving patients of Bolan Medical Complex and Sandeman Civil Hospital that angioplasty service would be offered in civil hospitals across the province.

He said a mafia was active in the health department which put obstacles in reforming the sector. “We are committed to discouraging the mafia in the health department and hospitals.”

He said a number of doctors drawing salaries from the department were living abroad.

He said the health department and government hospitals had reached the brink of destruction over the past 15 years but the situation had started improving as a result of recent reforms.

“We are making efforts to make Balochistan a healthy, educated and peaceful province,” he said.

The Commander, Southern Command, Lt Gen Nasser Khan Janjua, said: “How can poor cardiac patients afford high prices of stents and medicines when even government officers cannot afford them.” He recalled that when he was a lieutenant colonel he could not afford to purchase stent for his mother who had been prescribed stent for her angioplasty.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2015

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