PESHAWAR: Prof Nausherwan Burki, the man behind the government’s health reforms agenda, says that he is sick with the slow moving bureaucracy and wants speedy measures for implementation of Regional and District Health Authorities Act, 2019.

“The process is on but people work too slowly. Trying but bureaucratic wheels move very slowly,” Prof Nausherwan Burki, the chairman of Prime Minister Task Force on Health, told Dawn.

The law was passed on September 27, the day when scores of health employees sustained injuries in police baton charge and others were sent behind bars at Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar. The members of Grand Health Alliance, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, were supposed to stage a sit-in against the Act near the provincial assembly.

Prof Burki initiated health reforms when PTI assumed power in the province and Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act was implemented in four teaching hospitals in 2015. Later, it was extended to eight more hospitals but except two, others have yet to show any progress.

Prof Nausherwan Burki wants speedy enforcement of Regional and District Health Authorities Act, 2019

As the reform process was in progress at teaching institutions, a new law was enacted to pave way for putting in place a mechanism on pattern of MTI that drew stiff resistance from 50,000 employees working in more than 1,500 health facilities throughout the province.

The health department has been trying to pilot RDHA initially in one or few districts but is finding it hard to do it at a time when GHA has ended its 47-day strike last month after government’s assurance about allaying the concerns of health employees about the law. A committee with a provincial minister as its head has also been tasked to talk to the employees’ representatives.

Regardless of the committee’s meetings or the outcome, the government is determined to replace the district level health with the new model outlined in the law.

Dr Syed Farooq Jamil, the special secretary health, told this scribe that the plan was to introduce the law but ultimate decision was yet to be taken by the government.

Prof Barki also said that performance of health bureaucracy would be judged on the basis of the efforts made for pushing the reforms agenda.

Last year, a secretary was transferred on recommendation of the MTI’s architect that he was hindering the reform process. The same official had started strengthening district health system and played major role in advancing the PTI’s vision of reforms to improve patients’ care.

With his departure, many of the initiatives started by him went into hibernation. The new health administration is facing protests at hospitals over the law.

The provincial hospitals, which received about one million patients per day, remained closed from September 27 to November 14 as GHA pledged that it wouldn’t give services if the law was introduced.

The medics called off their strike only on guarantee by the government that the RDHA would not be enforced in its present shape. In such circumstances, piloting the law in one on more districts will invite protests from employees, who consider the law as step to privatise the district hospitals and make the patients pay more for diagnosis and treatment.

Unlike enforcement of MTIRS 2015, which was limited to few teaching health facilities, RDHA covers the whole province and every hospital anywhere that will be governed under the new law coined to grant financial and administrative autonomy to district level health facilities.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2019