KARACHI, June 7: As many as 178 health centres — which will be described as urban health clinics — will be made functional in the city during the first quarter of the next financial year under a federal health ministry initiative, said the executive district officer (health), Karachi, on Thursday.

Talking to Dawn, Dr A.D. Sajnani, the EDO Health of the Karachi City District Government, said that the ministry of health had planned to set up 900 clinics at the grass-roots level, with the objective of reducing the pressure on bigger government hospitals in seven selected districts of Pakistan. These are Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Quetta and Rawalpindi.

The federal government would bear the expenses of the health facilities to be established in each of the union councils of the seven districts for three years, following which the operational expenses will be transferred to the respective district governments. Each of the health centres will have a medical doctor, a nurse or dispenser, a lady health visitor and a sweeper-cum-guard, who will be appointed on contract after advertisements are placed in national dailies.

The urban health clinics will perform as out-patient centres and referral facilities as well. He said the plan for the urban clinics was unfolded at a meeting of nazims, DCOs and EDOs of the seven districts in question recently in Islamabad, with the Federal Health Minister, Mohammad Naseer Khan, in the chair. The participants were told that the ministry wanted to make the clinics functional at the earliest.

He said that the clinics would serve as service delivery institutions for patients reporting to them with minor health complaints. In addition to this, patients also be provided with emergency medicines at the clinics, he added.

Coming to the expenditures of the centres, Dr Sajnani said that the participants of the Islamabad meeting had been told that the government would allocate an amount of up to Rs40,000 per month for the rental of the clinics, besides meeting the salary component pertaining to the staffs employed at the clinics.

Answering a question, he said that the government intended to allocate Rs10,000 per month on account of medicines, which, according to some of the participants of the meeting, was a meagre and purposeless allocation.