PESHAWAR, Feb 11: The Health Regulatory Authority (HRA) has warned to close unregistered clinics, health units and laboratories if they failed to get registered with the authority within one month.

“Only 30 per cent clinics in the city were registered and the remaining 70 per cent needed to be registered,” said Col Javed Noor, chairman of HRA. He said that rules for the illegal blood transfusion hospitals were formulated and sent to the government.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, he said that diagnostic centres and X-ray labs should get registered within a period of one month. He said strict action would be taken against those, who didn’t comply with the order in stipulated time. He also suggested that the government should release grants to the authority to improve its performance.

To a question, he said that HRA had registered 1,100 clinics, private hospitals and laboratories in different parts of the province last year. He said that they did not have adequate staff to implement directives regarding the closure of unregistered clinics.

The medical practitioners, he said, managed to reopen their clinics after HRA closed them down for not possessing proper documents. The authority within limited resources, he continued, was doing its level best to provide better health facilities to the people.

He advised people to visit only those health units which were registered with HRA. He said that steps were being taken to quicken the pace of registration in order to improve the condition of hospitals. — Akhtar Ali