PESHAWAR: The health department is pinning its hopes on the public-private partnership for the improvement of health services in the merged tribal districts to cater to over five million residents.

Officials told Dawn that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Foundation, a government organisation, was in the process of contracting out six district headquarters hospitals in as many tribal districts for better patient care.

They said the merged districts formally known as Fata had 11,000 employees but as the key positions were vacant, the huge infrastructure wasn’t used optimally.

The officials said there was a severe shortage of doctors and women paramedics, the local population sought treatment for minor ailments in settled districts.

They said under the partnership initiative, agreements would be signed with selected firms having healthcare experience to provide primary, secondary and tertiary care services to the people.

Officials say public-private partnership promises better healthcare

The officials said more than 230 posts of doctors and 80 specialists had been lying vacant for many years and despite lucrative packages offered by the government failed to yield results as people weren’t coming due to the law and order station.

They believed that the partnership would improve healthcare in merged districts by offering human resources, including healthcare providers and other experts required to run the hospitals.

The officials said the foundation had received 100 applications last month from different organisations wanting to partner with the government and some of them had successfully operated hospitals in Punjab and Sindh provinces under similar arrangements.

When contacted, director (health) in merged districts Dr Shah Faisal Khanzada said the region had 286 sanctioned posts of women medical officers but most of them had long been lying vacant due to the disinterest of women doctors.

He, however, said the situation had improved due to the intervention of the Pakistan Army, so the people would join services.

Dr Khanzada said five of the six district headquarters hospitals, which were being contracted out to private firms, had been put up by the Pakistan Army and had state-of-the-art purpose-built buildings.

He said the Pakistan Army was also being included in steering committees Torun the six facilities under the partnership programme successfully.

The director (health) said of the total 1,108 facilities in the tribal districts, 159 remained unutilised and required upgradation, repairs, renovation and civil work and efforts were afoot to make them operational at the earliest.

He said the government had allocated Rs420 million for the initiative, which would be utilised once the agreements with the selected firms was signed.

Dr Khanzada said the department had initiated work to construct six trauma centres in every tribal district, where the people would get psychological and psychiatric care.

He said partnership with the private sector would save the government billions of rupees as the contracting parties would be required to install own machines and equipment in hospitals and maintain them and thus, providing quality and smooth care to the residents.

The director said he hoped that the initiative would be a success as the private organisations were eager to make partnership with the government due to the presence of hundreds of patients in district headquarters hospitals on a daily basis.

“Recently, we postponed the recruitment of 286 employees at these DHQ hospitals due to the programme. The selected private firms will hire them once the agreement is signed,” he said.

Dr Khanzada said the move had been made in line with the provincial health policy, which sought the launch of public-private partnership in hospitals for better patient care.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2019