Daily Times

Punjab government has deprived millions of citizens of six districts of South Punjab by stopping the provision of Mobile Health Units (MHUs) facility, Daily Times has observed.

Government has stopped the operation of MHUs in the said districts despite the grave concerns of different quarters over the lack of provision of health facilities in South Punjab. During the session of Punjab Assembly in December 2018, PPP MPA Makhdoom Usman said that there was not a single big hospital for the 48 million population of South Punjab.

However, the previous Punjab government in 2010 had established at least six MHUs commonly known as mobile hospitals aiming to provide diagnostic and treatment facilities to the people of far-flung and comparatively under-developed six districts of the South Punjab- where outreach services were required. Besides these MHUs, Punjab government established 14 more MHUs in other districts.

These districts includes; Rajanpur, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Muzzafargarh, Mianwali and Dera Ghazi Khan.

For the establishment of this project in six districts, government spent Rs40.5 million for each MHU. All the six MHUs were equipped with the facilities like X-ray, ultrasound machine, ECG equipment, a laboratory for common blood and urine tests, labour room, facility of vaccination for children, as well as a small operation theatre. Moreover, each MHU was each unit was staffed with two doctors (male and female), lady health visitor, a dispenser and laboratory technicians.

Since the establishment of the project, these MHUs have been catering the needs of people in the respective districts. According to sources, each MHU was attending at least 200 patients per day where they were provided with the facility of routine check-ups and laboratories tests. Government was bearing a huge amount of over Rs22 million per year for each MHU to keep them operational. They continued that after stopping their operation in said districts, government has placed these MHUs in different cities. One of MHU is placed in Ganga Ram Hospital Lahore, one in King Edward Medical University Lahore, one in Faisalabad Medical College and three of them in Nishtar Medical College Multan.

Sources in health department privy to development informed that owing to non-availability of hospitals in said districts, the MHUs were efficiently providing the health facilities to millions of people at their door steps. They said that the Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department signed an agreement with a private company-Medi Urge to keep the MHUs operational.

Punjab Primary and Secondary Healthcare Secretary Zahid Akhtar Zaman told Daily Times that to keep these MHUs operational in same way was unbearable as this was quite expensive. He said that the department has assessed that the current operational cost of these MHUs was at least eight times higher than the actual cost. “We are reviewing the contract made by previous government with Medi Urge Company while many other flaws have been surfaced in this regard,” Zaman asserted and said that department will retrieve all the 20 MHUs from company and will operate by itself.

He continued further that department has set all to retrieve from company and these would be operational again in next few weeks.

This is pertinent to mention here that these MHUs were the part of the Punjab’s previous PMLN government program of launching up to 1000 MHUs in the province to provide health facilities to people of the province at their door steps. However, it could launch only 20 MHUs till the end of its second tenure in 2018.

Published in Daily Times, February 17^th 2019.