MULTAN: A meeting regarding establishment of a new district headquarters (DHQ) hospital in Multan besides handing over three premises of Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif DHQ Hospital to the Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education (SH&ME) will be held in Lahore on Thursday (today).

According to an official notification issued on Wednesday, the meeting will be chaired by provincial health minister Dr Yasmin Rashid, while secretary SH&ME, chief executive officer of the Multan district health authority, vice chancellor of the Nishtar Medical University and the medical superintendents of MMSS DHQ Hospital and Children Hospital and Institute of Child Health will attend the meeting.

Sources said the province has decided to hand over the three campuses of the MMSS DHQ Hospital to the Nishtar Hospital to pave way for the establishment of a new DHQ Hospital for the city while keeping in view patients’ burden on already established health facilities.

Instead of establishing a separate DHQ hospital in Multan, the previous PML-N government merged three hospitals of the city declaring them the Multan DHQ hospital and then chief minister Shahbaz Sharif inaugurated the 45-bed ‘DHQ’ Hospital during his visit to the city.

This is not what his predecessor Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi had planned for the city.

On Nov 3, 2004, then chief minister Pervaiz Elahi announced establishing a 300-bed DHQ Hospital in Multan. Though the then government acquired land for the hospital at Hassan Sawali Chowk but the hospital never saw the light of the day.

In 2008, the Shahbaz government set in. In November 2008, he announced establishing the Multan Institute of Kidney Diseases at the DHQ hospital building and setting up the Multan DHQ hospital at a separate place; however, later on the provincial government merged the Shahbaz Sharif General Hospital, the Civil Hospital and the Fatima Jinnah Women Hospital and gave them the name of the Multan DHQ hospital.

The reality is the Civil Hospital Multan was established in 19th century while the Fatima Jinnah Women Hospital was established in 1960.

On Aug 7, 2012, Mr Sharif laid the foundation stone of the ‘Nawaz Sharif Hospital’ at the state land, which was retrieved from a former provincial minister. Later, the name of the hospital was changed to Shahbaz Sharif Hospital.

At the time merger the government drew criticism for merging three hospitals to make a 45-bed DHQ hospital as the critics were of the view that a hospital must have 200 beds to be declared a DHQ hospital.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2019