PESHAWAR, Oct 10: NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah has said that the government will spend Rs1 billion next year to develop health care facilities in different towns to lessen the burden on tertiary hospitals in the city.

Inaugurating an Institution-Based Practice centre in the renovated building at the Khyber Teaching Hospital on Tuesday night, the governor said that the government was not opposed to the private practice by the doctors employed by government but it wanted to regularize it for the benefit of patients.

He said the government had granted administrative and financial autonomy to the tertiary hospitals and the money collected through the IBP would be spent on the improvement of facilities at these hospitals.

He said that before the IBP the doctors used to loot the patients but now there would be transparency as far as the private practice by the doctors was concerned.

The governor took exception to the attitude of the KTH’s finance director towards the IBP staff and directed the authorities to check the errant officials in order to facilitate the staffers.

The governor said that the medical community had deviated from its basic responsibility of providing treatment facilities to the patients and education to the medical students, which, he added, was giving a bad name to the whole community.

He said that the abuse of syringes was the main cause of hepatitis in society and urged the medical community to destroy the syringes so that these could not be recycled and resold in the market.

KTH chief executive Dr Zahir Shah said that Rs7 million had been spent on the establishment of departments of Nephrology and Oncology and the OPDs at the renovated building which would not only facilitate the IBP patients but would also lessen the burden on the OPDs in morning shift.