Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday accorded his approval for the construction of 30 state-of-the-art hospitals across the country.

The approval was granted for construction of three hospitals in Islamabad with a capacity of 600 beds each, besides 10 500-bedded hospitals and 20 250-bedded hospitals across the country.

The prime minister was briefed over the existing healthcare infrastructure in the country in the context of population, hospital-beds ratio and availability of in-patient care facility.

The comprehensive briefing pertained to the Prime Minister’s Initiative to Improve Healthcare Infrastructure across the length and breadth of the country, said a press release issued on Friday.

During briefing, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the government was simultaneously targeting poverty and disease through infrastructure development and establishment of healthcare infrastructure across the length and breadth of
the country.

“By the grace of Almighty Allah, we are consolidating the gains of economic turnaround, energy self-sufficiency and infrastructure development for alleviating poverty and reducing unemployment, and addressing the long neglected healthcare infrastructure in the country for eliminating the woes of disease stricken masses,” he said.

It was the responsibility of the government to ensure healthy living for the citizens, as they could contribute towards the development and prosperity of the country without any hindrance, he added.

The meeting was briefed that ratio of beds per 1000 people in Pakistan was 0:5 in 1970, 0:7 in 2005, 0:61 in 2015 while 0:62 in the present year.

The prime minister directed to restore work on one obstetrics and gynecology hospital in Rawalpindi that had been stopped in 2011 due to devolution.

He further directed that federal government should complete the structure and run this hospital and also approved allocation of funds for completing the hospital within next 18 months.

Besides this, the prime minister also approved the proposed sites for two more hospitals in Islamabad. He directed that four to five 100-bed hospitals be completed in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan.

He would personally monitor the progress on hospitals in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and other parts of the country, the premier said.

He emphasised that it must be ensured that poverty ranking, remoteness, burden of diseases, presence of public and private hospitals, poor, health indicators in the areas of Balochistan, Interior Sindh, South Punjab, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, FATA, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan should be given top priority while finalising the sites for construction of the hospitals.

The prime minister directed that majority of these hospitals must be completed within next 18 months according to the criteria. He said that his office and Finance Ministry would collectively allocate funds for construction of these hospitals. The meeting was further briefed that a healthcare infrastructure company would be established to review day-to-day progress on the execution of this
initiative. The prime minister was also informed that services of globally acknowledged designing consultants would be hired for designing of these hospitals in order to construct them on modern lines.