ISLAMABAD: Polyclinic extension project hinges on the Islamabad High Court (IHC) decision reserved a year ago in a petition filed by the residents of G-6, challenging constructions in the park located in front of the hospital.

This was stated by the Executive Director Polyclinic Dr Shahid Hanif during first ever meeting of the Committee on Polyclinic Reforms held in the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) on Wednesday.

The committee, chaired by Special Assistant to Prime Minister for NHS Dr Zafar Mirza, was established on June 3to give recommendations for reforms in the areas of infrastructure, service delivery and human resources management besides planning filter clinics around Polyclinic by re-profiling the attached dispensaries.

Dr Hanif, while talking to Dawn, said during the meeting a member of the Committee Dr Tahir Javed, who had also served as health minister in Punjab, said the hospital had limited resources but patient turnover was huge.

“I briefed the committee that the project to extend hospital to Argentina Park is ready but construction work cannot be started until IHC announces its decision it had reserved around a year ago,” he said.

A decade back, the government had decided to extend Polyclinic to a part of the Argentina Park but project was delayed because of different reasons.

In 2015, residents of sector G-6 obtained a stay order against the construction from IHC. Finally on January 15, Supreme Court of Pakistan vacated the stay order and allowed the government to start constructing Polyclinic extension on one third of the park which is 2.5 acres.

Moreover, the Argentinean embassy was also in favour of the extension.

However, at the same time it feared that the monument and the park might vanish because of the hospital building and its car parking.

Dr Hanif said the apex court had not mentioned in its written order against the IHC stay that the construction work should be started so he told the committee that until IHC decides the case, work on extension cannot be started.

“Moreover, it was also decided that issues related to Polyclinic would be discussed on fortnightly basis,” he said.

According to an official statement, issued by the Ministry of NHS, the meeting of the committee was presided over by Special Assistant to Prime Minister for NHS Dr Zafar Mirza and participated by Secretary Health Zahid Saeed, ED Polyclinic, representative of Planning Commission and other members.

PM’s special assistant highlighted that the present government was fully committed to achieving better health outcomes.

“Although the hospital has space issues, the staff is hard working. There is an urgent need to work on reform process to provide quality healthcare services to people. We will take all the measures to resolve the issue,” he said.

He also said Polyclinic could be revamped to act as filter clinic and decrease the load on the main hospital.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2019