GUJRAT: The District Health Authority (DHA) has shut down the pharmacies of patients’ welfare association at the Jalalpur Jattan Civil Hospital and THQ Hospitals in Kharian and Kunjah on the orders of the Punjab Health secretary affecting the poor and needy patients.

A senior DHA official said that during her visit to the Jalalpur Jattan Civil Hospital last week, Health and Population Secretary Nadia Saqib directed the local health authorities to close the patients’ welfare association’s medical store and ordered that these medicines should not be allowed without testing by the drug testing laboratory (DTL).

The official also claimed that since the official budget for medicines at the Jalalpur Civil Hospital was very low, even compared to that of the THQ-level hospitals, local authorities had engaged civil society and philanthropists to supplement the officially-provided medicines to facilitate the poor and needy patients.

However, following her visit to Gujrat on Wednesday the last, the medical store was immediately sealed, whereas patients welfare associations’ medical stores in Kharian and Kunjah THQs were also closed down.

Official sources claimed that the Health secretary had expressed annoyance at the provision of medicines without a DTL report. They said that the DTL report usually took 40-50 days and until then these medical stores would remain closed.

Though Jalalpur Jattan had been upgraded as a tehsil headquarter by former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi in 2022, the second major urban town of Gujrat district could not get a THQ-level hospital for its 700,000 population.

The local chapter of the Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan (JI) and representatives of civil society have staged several protests and sit-ins for the establishment of a THQ Hospital, but to no avail so far.

The representatives of patients’ welfare association have urged Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to take notice of the situation and ensure the establishment of a THQ hospital and grant permission to resume the provision of medicine and increase the medicine budget of the hospital. They also criticised the revolving door of medical superintendents at the Jalalpur Jattan Civil Hospital and demanded the provision of more medical officers and other staff at the hospital.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2026