LAHORE, April 7: Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed has said the government is trying to resolve doctors’ problems adding that they are the major force to run the huge infrastructure and healthcare system in the province.

He was speaking at a seminar organised in connection with the World Health Day at the Institute of Public Health on Friday. The theme for this year’s health day is “Working together for health”. The theme aims at drawing attention to the global health workforce crisis and to celebrate the dignity and value of working for health.

Dr Javed said in order to develop and facilitate human resources in the health sector, the government had launched the Health Sector Reforms Programme (HSRP) and offered attractive salaries, transport facility, opportunity of private practice at basic health units and rural health centres all over the province.

He said the doctors, who would serve at the BHUs and RHCs for two years, would be given 25 additional marks in the Punjab Public Service Commission examinations for regular service. They would be accommodated in teaching hospitals on priority basis.

The minister said encouraging feedback had been received as a large number of doctors, including those from the private sector, applied for posting at BHUs and RHCs.

Dr Javed stressed that the doctors opting to join BHUs and RHCs must perform their duties diligently during working hours.

The health department was also working to expand the base of graduate nurses by launching degree courses at every medical college in the province. He hoped that the courses would be launched within a year.

He said the government was offering latest training and refresher courses to in-service doctors. Modern training courses would be launched for the paramedical staff, he added.

Under the HSRP, he said, all missing facilities would be provided at RHCs within a year and at BHUs within two years.

He said Rs6.5 billion would be spent in two years on the provision of medical staff, buildings, water, gas, electricity and other necessary facilities at RHCs and BHUs.

The record of every patient and immunisation of every child would be maintained at RHCs. All 295 RHCs would be brought at par with the THQs, Dr Javed concluded.

Earlier, WHO’s Punjab operations officer Ismatullah Chaudhry read a message from WHO director-general Dr Lee Jong-wook. Dr Jong-wook said the national health systems all over the world were finding it difficult to train, sustain and retain their workers. In developed countries, as population’s age and chronic conditions increase, there was an ever-growing demand for health workers.

He said this need was increasingly being met by recruitment of trained workers from developing countries; a trend that exacerbates the resource shortfall there.

Without a strong health workforce, he said, advances in healthcare could not reach and benefit the people, who need them. Effective ways of preventing and treating diseases were assessment, delivery and monitoring by health workers.

He said the capacity to respond to the threat of pandemic human influenza, global efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals, and all other efforts to address priority diseases were threatened by health workforce shortages. These shortages were not limited to health practitioners but extended to educators and trainers, managers and support staff.

He said poor distribution of resources, wasted and unused skills and migration of health workers were making the situation worse.

IPH dean Prof Shaheena Manzoor also spoke on the occasion.