RAWALPINDI, March 28: The Punjab government is working on a multi-billion rupees project to improve the quality of health care facilities at Rural Health Centres (RHCs) across the province. Provincial Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed told this reporter on Monday that according to preliminary plans, the government intended to allocate almost Rs30-40 million to each RHC.

There are some 291 RHCs in the province. Each RHC is on average visited by some 5,000-6,000 patients every month and is currently manned by three medical officers who besides examining the patients routinely perform minor surgeries.

The minister said implementation of the project would begin from next financial year.

He said the proposed improvements would be oriented towards improving surgical facilities at these centres. “We would like to see the surgical facilities at the RHCs on a par with those available at district headquarters hospitals so that people do not have to travel to bigger cities for surgeries,” he added.

The amount is proposed to be spent on procurement of equipment, construction of doctors’ residences, upgradation of operation theatres and establishment of surgical wards.

“Our focus would be on creation of new posts for surgeons and provision of infrastructure,” Dr Javed said.

Meanwhile, those critical of the plan said it was unclear how the provincial government would be able to spare a huge amount running into billions of rupees only to upgrade the RHCs when the tertiary health care centres still needed massive improvement.

They said another interesting aspect was as to how the government would lure the surgeons to work at the grass-roots level. As per the present situation, the specialist positions including those of surgeons are lying vacant in the tehsil headquarters hospitals, they added.

The critics said vacancies had been advertized on a number of occasions but still went begging as the senior doctors did not seem to be interested to serve at the tehsil level, what to speak of RHCs.

They said the improvements envisaged under the health reforms being implemented by the health department would not be able to produce the desired impact until and unless it got quality doctors and surgeons, which was a must for restoring the general public’s confidence in them.

One of the critics said everything planned under this project was already existent in the RHCs, adding that attaining the high-tech standards being contemplated by the minister appeared to be an improbable task under the present scenario.

In a related development, the Punjab health minister disclosed that the health department had shelved a plan prepared by his predecessor for improving the THQ hospitals.

“We decided to do away with the project because it involved expenditure of small amounts of Rs2-3 million per THQ hospital, which would not have brought about any significant change.”