0
KARACHI, Jan 4: The provincial health department has decided to make some 76 nonfunctional Basic Health Units (BHU) functional all over Sindh.
An official of the department disclosed that it had also been decided to upgrade some 859 hospitals and Rural Health Centres (RHU) in the province. In that regard, he said, a sum of Rs725 million had been approved.
The health department has proposed a five-year upgradation program to the Sindh government to improve health services.
“The 76 BHUs located in the backward areas of Sindh have been nonfunctional for years due to several reasons, especially paucity of resources. People living in these areas are deprived of basic health facilities and in case of any emergency they have to rush to far-off areas for treatment,” the official said.
Giving details of each hospital, he said their were 111 district hospitals that needed to be upgraded at a cost of Rs10 million; there were also 44 taluka hospitals functioning in Sindh. Since the population had increased considerably, these taluka hospitals were not sufficient to cater to the needs of the population. So the department had decided to upgrade all the taluka hospitals at a cost of Rs220 million.
The official said that there were 92 Rural Health Centres (RHCs) all over Sindh. Provincial health minister had visited most of them and checked their OPD registers and observed that the OPD ratio had increased manifold.
“The department will also upgrade all the 92 RHCs which will cost around Rs230 million,” the official added. He said that there were 712 BHUs, of which 636 were functional providing health cover at the grassroots level and must be equipped with maximum facilities.
He said the upgradation of 636 BHUs would cost around Rs127 million. To make all these 76 BHUs functional, it would cost Rs38 million. He added that the total cost cams to around Rs725 million which would be spent in five years.
“However we are exploring ways to arrange funds for the purpose so that the plan can be implemented in the shortest possible period,” he said.
POLIO: Dr Hamid Jaffery, in charge of the anti-polio campaign of the World Health Organisation (WHO), called on Sindh health minister Ahsan Ahmed on Friday.
They discussed matters relating to the anti-polio campaign and reviewed the polio situation in Sindh.
The WHO official expressed his satisfaction over the successful conclusion of the anti-polio campaign conducted by the health ministry in the province and hoped that other provinces of Pakistan would follow suit.
He said that polio incidence had decreased by 16% in Sindh, a better score compared with the situation in the other provinces.
He said that another significant feature of the success was that aside from sporadic polio cases in different districts, the diseases was being restricted to three districts of Jacobabad, Hyderabad and Karachi.
The health minister thanked the WHO expert and said that Sindh needed the assistance of more WHO experts in view of the influx of Afghan refugees into the province.—PPI/APP
