PESHAWAR, Jan 12: The Frontier province, which has been coping with the burden of more than 1,500,000 Afghan refugees since 1989, is short of 512 medical officers, hence it is unable to cater to the needs of its own citizens.
The basic health units (BHUs) and rural health centres (RHCs), which are meant to cater to the needs of rural population, according to the MPAs are giving a look of deserted cattle pens. The health department affirmed that at present it could not provide required staff to BHUs and RHCs.
“There are BHU buildings. They don’t have any staff or medicines,” said an MPA from Lakki Marwat.
Most of the district hospitals are not equipped with the computer aided tomography (CAT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. The health department is of the view that the people from backward and remote districts cannot be provided with the expensive machines.
“We have not enough funds to install the expensive machines at district headquarters hospitals across the province,” Health Minister Syed Zahir Shah told the house.
Responding to the queries asked by the lawmakers during the question-answer’s hour on Monday, Mr Shah said at present health department was short of 512 medical officers of different grades. According to the minister some of the officers had gone to attend their training courses, some were on long-leave and others were serving in other departments on deputation.
He said the government was trying to solve the problems of rural areas on priority basis but it was starved of required funds.Speaker Kiramatullah Chagharmati, who was presiding over the meeting, said all answers to be taken as read. He didn’t allow the MPAs to discuss in details the health problems being faced by the people in remote areas.
The speaker was in a hurry to deal with the agenda but the assembly’s sound system was not working properly. Later it died down. No one knew, what was going on and what the MPAs were speaking about. The entire exercise was nothing but the reflection of scenes from an old silent movie.
The lawmakers, however, refused to buy the explanations offered by the health minister which he made on various queries.
The minister was unaware of the happenings in the health department. His own officials, sitting in the officers’ gallery, didn’t provide him with enough material to satisfy his colleagues. The incomplete answers provided to the house also landed the minister in trouble.
The lawmakers spoke against the opaque business of the health department officialdom and termed it barren. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz lawmakers from Abbottabad drew the attention of the house towards the delicate problems at Ayub Teaching Complex, Abbottabad, and pressed the minister to solve them immediately, otherwise they would boycott the proceedings of the house.
Mohammad Zahir Shah of PML from Shangla said there was not a single BHU in his village. He said how he could assure his voters in other villages that he would get them BHUs or RHCs in such a situation. He said there were some six BHUs in the surrounding villages of PF-87 but none of them had medical officers.
He said district headquarters hospital Alpuri and civil hospital Bashaam had no doctors.
Syed Qalb-i-Hasan from Kohat demanded of the government to install MRI and CT scan machines at Kohat district headquarters hospital. He said owing to the sudden closure of Kohat tunnel, the people from Kartak, Lakki Marwat and Hangu had no option but to bring patients to Kohat hospital, which could not cope with the burden.
Dr Khalid Raza Zakori from Lakki Marwat said there were 27 BHUs in his district but 17 had no medical officers. This year, he said, the coalition government had approved only one dispensary for entire district. He said he was not satisfied with the answers provided by the department and read by the minister.
Dr Zakori said the district headquarters hospital, constructed in 2005, started functioning in 2007. The government, he said, equipped it with Rs28.217 million’s machinery but a single operation had not been conducted upon any patient so for in this hospital.