PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is introducing a law on the pattern of Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 to grant financial and administrative autonomy to the district level hospitals and improve patients’ care at the local level.

The law is meant to free the local hospitals from the influence of politicians as well as health department and run them through professionals.

The draft law is aimed at constituting a policy board at the provincial level to ensure uniformity in the regional health authority (RHA). The council will be headed by health minister, according to sources.

Other members of the council will include health secretary and chief executive officers (CEOs) of each RHA. The CEO will be a doctor by profession, who will be elected through votes by medics working in the respective region. A nurse, to be elected by her colleagues from the same region, will be also member of the council.

Doctors, paramedics oppose proposed legislation

The council will have the services of three civil society members, such as educationist, retired judge or bureaucrat or social worker etc.

This council will run the affairs of RHA in accordance with the guidelines and decisions of the policy board, which will implement the government’s policy. Each and every decision will be taken on voting of the RHA council.

The draft bill has also enraged the doctors, who want that it should not be passed before their consent.

The government, however, argued that it was its responsibility to pass laws and doctors were required to follow the same.

The non-elected members of the council will be selected by search and nomination council to be formed by the government.

The district health authority (DHA) will have two doctors as members with 10 years experience in medicines and allied medical sciences and surgery.

It will not be mandatory for both the members to belong to the same district, region or the province. A senior nurse from the region along and two persons representing civil society will be also its members.

They will elect their chairperson through voting. A total of 34 DHAs have been proposed. The DHA will recruit doctors and other staff and will evaluate the efficiency of the staff periodically.

The doctors and paramedics have been expressing concerns over the proposed piece of legislation. During the past few days, both the associations have held demonstrations against the draft bill but to no avail as the government seems determined to go ahead with the plan of passing the law from the assembly and implementing the same.

The government is under pressure to improve the district health services as despite the presence of 5,000 medical officers and 15,000 paramedics, who have been deployed in about 1,500 health facilities at the district level, the patients continue to visit Peshawar-based hospitals for minor ailments.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2019