LARKANA: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Sindh president Haleem Adil Shaikh has said that after having handed over all government hos­p­itals to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) the Sindh government is squandering the budget me­ant for running the health facilities.

Mr Shaikh told reporters while visiting families of HIV-affected persons in Allah Dino Selaro village and Ratodero Taluka Hospital on Sunday that it was not enough to hold a blood screening camp in the village for two days. The massive spread of the virus demanded a thorough screening of the entire village population, he said.

He said that even this small village had 19 HIV positive individuals and two of them had died already but nobody was ready to inform the nation about the reasons behind spread of the deadly disease on such a massive scale.

He vowed to take up the issue with Prime Min­ister Imran Khan and ens­ure that health cards were issued to the affected villagers immediately.

Mr Shaikh, who is also PTI’s parliamentary leader in the Sindh Assem­bly, said that the Sindh chief minister, who was in the habit of issuing boastful statements about the quality of province’s health facilities, had not even bothered to visit Larkana yet.

He alleged that instead of Roti, kapra aur makan, voters of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto were being gifted HIV/AIDS, which had now spread its tentacles to Hyder­abad and other parts of the province.

He said that he had submitted a res­o­lution in the Sindh Assembly on Jan 15 about the spread of the deadly virus in the province but it was unfortun­ate that the health department, despite having a huge budget of aro­u­nd Rs96 billion, appeared unable to arrange HIV/AIDS test kits and medicines.

He said that screening for HIV should be carried out at all basic health units and taluka hospitals and an AIDS treatment centre should also be established in Ratodero to treat the large number of children afflicted by the deadly virus.

Mr Shaikh was accompanied by PTI leaders Allah Bakhsh Unnar, Rehmat Bakhsh Unnar, Mohammad Ali Hakro and others during the visit.

‘Sindh govt swallows up Rs96bn health budget’

DADU: During his visit to the Dadu Civil Hospital on Sunday, Mr Shaikh told local reporters that the Sindh government and its “corrupt” bureaucracy swallowed up Rs96 billion budget of the health department hence no improvement was seen in the service delivery of public sector health facilities.

He said that Sindh’s health sector was in a serious need for revamp but the provincial government had no desire for sincere and selfless work for an improvement of hospitals.

He said the Sindh government should provide latest and modern equipment to the hospital. The civil hospital faced an acute shortage of facilities. “There is no CT scan, MRI and ventilator in this biggest and oldest hospital of the district,” he noted.

About Sindh governor’s controversial remarks, he said the governor had not talked about a division of Sindh but the social media twisted his words out of context and attributed it to him which gave the impression as if he had talked about Sindh’s division.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2019