Punjab Finance, Excise and Taxation Minister Mian Mujtaba Shuja ur Rehman on Sunday said that 58 million people did not have access to safe drinking water while 59 million people were living in one-room houses.
Talking to various delegations at his residence, he said that only 20 percent of the population had access to trained birth attendants.
He said that 70 percent of the population resided in rural areas which were closely linked with basic health centres (BHCs), and therefore, the government was upgrading the infrastructure of these BHC’s to provide modern health facilities to the masses.
Shuja said that the government was providing subsidies worth billions of rupees on food items to the deserving citizens, adding that Rs 300 million were being spent to provide a free-of-cost dialysis facility to the less fortunate kidney patients.
Furthermore, he said that the present government was paying full attention towards the provision of state-of-the-art healthcare facilities to the public.
He said that a substantial amount of Rs 7.5 billon was being spent on the provision of free treatment and medicines to the less fortunate in the province’s public sector hospitals.
Moreover, Shuja said that more than 40 percent of the country’s adult population (over the age of 45) suffered from at least one form of a non-communicable disease, adding that the trend seemed to be rising
“This rising trend is likely to double the burden of diseases in countries such as ours and is likely to have significant health and economic implications,” he concluded.
