PESHAWAR: A project that was started to provide treatment facilities to the people in remote areas by consultants through communication technology has hit snags after the transfer of then chief secretary Mohammad Azam Khan.

The programme was envisaged to benefit people in remote districts who had no accessibility to specialised healthcare.

Mohammad Azam Khan, who is now principal secretary to the prime minister, had initiated the telemedicine project initially to provide healthcare facilities to the people in five districts, including Chitral, Nowshera, Karak, Swabi and Battagram, via internet in 2017. It was virtually stopped in July 2018 owing to unavailability of funds.

The scheme was envisaged to benefit patients in five remote districts

Sources said that the health department, which had planned to extend the innovative programme to five more districts from this year in KP, had not been able to continue the activities in the existing districts where number of patients had reached 15 on average per day.

Sources in the health department told this correspondent that Punjab had shown interest in replicating the programme and a few meetings had also taken place in this regard, but due to stoppage of the programme it couldn’t be started in Punjab.

Besides this, the KP minister and mineral development department has requested the health department to start the telemedicine project in its 12 clusters in six districts to provide treatment to its workforce engaged in mining.

The department has carried out an assessment five months ago and a PC-I worth Rs60 million has been made to safeguard the labourers and their families through connecting their dispensaries with main spoke of telemedicine located at the Services Hospital, Peshawar.

The sources said that the assessment had shown that each of the dispensaries was run by one dispenser where the people brought suffered from skin, eye and respiratory tract infections besides diarrhea, gynaecological ailments, hypertension, arthritis, body aches, injuries, urinary tract infections, depression, chests diseases, epilepsy, cough, ear, nose and throat problems and snakebite.

However, about 20,000 workers banked on only dispensers for their treatment and the telemedicine project had planned to provide them with specialised services, but the programme has been put on backburner after the former chief secretary left the province.

The sources said that first phase of the programme was launched at a cost of Rs95 million as part of special initiatives, but the finance department released Rs70 million and was yet to give Rs25 million more due to which the outstanding dues of consultants remained unpaid.

The sources said that the health department had decided to extend the telemedicine services to more districts in second phase for which a PC-I of Rs214 million had been prepared which was returned by the Special Development Unit of the chief secretary’s office, saying it was supposed to pilot the projects and it should now be started as a regular programme.

However, the health department is yet to take up the issue and as a result the people in the designated far-flung areas are without specialised curative and investigative services.

Under the project, which has been appreciated by eHealth Association of Pakistan, the people undergo checkups by consultants sitting in Services Hospital, Peshawar.

Specialists examine the patients on big screens from their local rural health centres through internet contact between the local and Peshawar-based doctors.

The sources said that the department’s request for release of Rs25 million remaining amount from the first phase to run the programme till December this year had also fallen on deaf ears.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2018