PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is still undecided whether to give the status to medical teaching institution to the newly-established Fountain House or allow it to operate under health department, amid problems faced by patients, especially children, according to sources.
Completed in 2024, work on construction of Fountain House was started in 2013 with the hope that young, elderly and children would start receiving psychiatric services under one roof but the facility is yet to become operational mainly because it is still being discussed to let it work under health department or declare it a medical teaching institution (MTI).
The 100-bed Fountain House, which was supposed to be state-of-the-art facility with academic and clinical services for trainee doctors, nurses and paramedics, is yet to offer even normal type of patients’ care.
“There are only two psychiatrists of the total 20 medics deployed at the facility. The remaining are general cadre doctors, who are not trained in the field of psychiatry,” sources told this scribe.
Work on the hospital started in 2013 was completed in 2024
The members of Pakistan Psychiatric Society (PPS) have been demanding of the government to declare Fountain House an MTI to make it a compressive psychiatric hospital.
“The government has been claiming that efforts are under way to make it centre of excellence, not only for patients’ care, but also for training and producing human resources in psychiatry and its super-specialties, psychology and allied mental health fields but the ground realities paint another picture,” a senior member of PPS told Dawn.
Health department outlined a comprehensive plan in January 2025 wherein it was mentioned to notify Fountain House as MTI and announce Board of Governors (BoG) for it to make it operational at the earliest.
The government started implementation of Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act in 2015 in teaching hospitals and their affiliated medical and dental colleges to grant them financial and administrative autonomy. The MTI-covered institutions are now managed by the respective BoG with no control of health department. All decisions of an MTI are taken by its BoG in line with its needs.
“It is unclear at the moment and is being discussed,” chairman of MTI-Policy Board Prof Nausherwan Burki told Dawn when asked if Fountain House would be notified as MTI.
The PPS members are of the opinion that Fountain House will make prompt progress only when it is declared as MTI and decisions regarding appointments and procurements are taken quickly because under health department such process takes painfully longer time.
The government has shifted the existing Sarhad Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases (SHPD) to the premises of Fountain House, located in Hayatabad Township. The 145 staff members of SHPD, who are employees of health department, now work in FH. Once Fountain House gets the status of MTI, it can start independent recruitment.
“The original PC-1 for the project clearly identifies FH as an MTI. After becoming operational, it will be a flagship centre for mental health subspecialties including child and adolescent psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, neuropsychiatry and addiction medicine, alongside community mental health services,” said PPS members.
Except Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, all other provinces have specialised psychiatric hospitals where all facilities are provided to patients.
“FH’s declaration as MTI will allow Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to showcase itself as a regional leader in mental healthcare, while opening doors for collaboration with international mental health research and training organisations,” a senior psychiatrist said.
He said that Health Minister Khaliqur Rehman had already pledged to make it MTI in his meeting with PPS a month ago but there was no progress as yet.
He said that there were more than 60 qualified psychiatrists in the province who were professionally capable of running a state-of-the-art psychiatric teaching hospital. He added that FH could be made a 250-bed hospital with separate admission facilities for children, women and elderly people.
The psychiatric said that besides service delivery to patients, it would lead to strengthening training and research and producing more specialists, who could serve in district hospitals. “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa requires strengthening psychiatric services more than any province because of endless series of violence, which has exposed its people to host of diseases, mostly mental ailments,” he added.
Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2026
