Health dept short of 50 mobile health units

The government would procure 50 additional mobile health units (MHUs) to ensure effective medical services for residents of far-flung areas. Of the total, 20 MHUs would be launched during the coming months as six are already operational in Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur, Mianwali, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur and Bahawalnagar and facilitating the community. An official source on Thursday said a mobile health unit contains collapsible and non-collapsible diagnostic and invasive & non-invasive electro-medical equipment. He said it also contains health education material to disseminate the information strategically and added area of diagnostics plans to be strengthened to keep pace with ever-changing demands of time and to make health and medical analyses more scientific. In addition, the official said establishment of seven rural health centres (RHCs), 30 basic health units (BHUs), upgradation of 15 existing RHCs and 35 BHUs is also part of advancement planned for this year. The other activities for this year are addition of 4,000 new doctors, 450 dentists, 3000 nurses, 4500 paramedics and 500 traditional birth attendants (TBAs). Moreover, the official said under preventive program about 7.5 million children were targeted to be immunized and 22 million packets of ORS are likely to be distributed. Regarding strategic priorities for this year, he said strengthening of primary health care facilities particularly with improvement of mother and child health initially at ICT and later to be replicated at provincial level. Mobilization of resources through international development partnership, initiate social protection or social health insurance to assure provision of quality and affordable health care particularly to the vulnerable and health sector reforms are also part of activities to be implemented this year.