LAHORE, Aug 27: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Saturday gave go ahead for the construction of new building for Shaikh Zayed Postgraduate Medical Institute and an additional storey on the existing Shaikh Zayed hospital with a cost of Rs980 million and Rs200 million, respectively.

The prime minister also laid the foundation stone of an additional block at the Shaikha Fatima Institute of Nursing and Health Sciences (SFIN&HS). The federal government has already released Rs40 million for the project.

He also announced that Rs10 million grant announced by former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Husain for the patients’ welfare would immediately be released. He called for the judicious and transparent spending of the money.

Mr Aziz said the federal government was designing policies and operating a few hospitals to ensure that healthcare interventions’ fruits reach at the grassroots level.

Referring to a report on the quality of drinking water in the country, he received a few months ago, the prime minister said: “The report was quite scary and had made us nervous.”

Terming the water-borne diseases, including hepatitis, a major threat, he said that he had asked the health minister to take measures to help check the rising incidence of such ailments. He said the government had allocated Rs2.5 billion for a programme to control hepatitis and provide clean drinking water to the people. “The programme will be considered good, if it will affect the lives of people positively,” he added.

Stressing improvement in health indicators, he said it was also an obligation for being the major components of millennium development goals.

Besides providing quality healthcare, he said, it was also the need of the hour to make advances in quality of medical and nursing education.

The prime minister said the federal government was upgrading its three centres of excellence —- Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad; Shaikh Zayed Medical Complex, Lahore; and Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Institute, Karachi.

He said Quaid-i-Azam had created Pakistan and now it was a trust in the hands of the present government. He vowed that the present leadership would make Pakistan a better, safer, moderate, modern and enlightened country on the world map. He said the merit would prevail in the country and there was no room for complacency.

He said Islam was the religion of peace and does not allow sectarianism or extremism.

Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool said on the occasion it was alarming that somewhere between 25 per cent to 35 per cent population in the country was suffering from chronic diseases.

He called for original indigenous research to combat local diseases besides focusing their prevention.

Federal health minister Naseer Khan said the government believed in the preventive healthcare and focusing primary healthcare services. Still, he said, the government was also paying due attention towards the promotion and development of curative healthcare services from basic health units to tertiary care hospitals in the country.

Shaikh Zayed Postgraduate Medical Complex chairman and dean Prof Anwaar A Khan presented a report on the hospital. The complex running since its establishment in 1973 had now 715 beds, he added.