Daily Times

Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Ali Amin Khan Gandapur on Saturday termed health sector as one of his government’s key priorities sectors.

He said that efforts were underway to strengthen healthcare facilities at grass roots level by ensuring the efficient and effective use of available medical equipments and human resources in these hospitals. He said that it was aimed to ensure basic healthcare facilities to the people at local level and thereby reducing the patients load on teaching hospitals.

He stated that his government was making efforts to improve the standards of public sector hospitals so that maximum public sector hospitals could serve under Sehat Card program to make healthcare services accessible to people everywhere in the province.

Gandapur remaked that steps had been taken to address gaps and loopholes in Sihat Card scheme, prevent its misuse, and enhance its efficiency adding that these efforts have resulted in significant improvement in free treatment facilities under the scheme.

The chief minister shared these views while talking to a delegation of Insaf Doctors Forum who called on him at his office here and discussed with him matters related to the ongoing reforms in the health sector, improvements in service delivery in public sector hospitals, and ways to address issues facing the doctor community.

The chief minister said that the provincial government was planning to include life insurance scheme in Sehat Card program which, he termed, as a unique program of social protection.

Ali Amin Gandapur stated that his government was also planning to establish its own life insurance company to run all its social protection schemes on sustainable grounds adding that for the first time, bone marrow and liver transplant projects are also being launched in the province.

He said that the provincial government would welcome inputs from the medical community for improvement and reforms in health sectors and asked the doctors to sit with the concerned quarters of Health Department and bring forward viable proposals for integrating emergency and ICU services in all public sector hospitals of the province to improve the overall patients care systems in these hospitals for the benifit of patients at large.