Sometime back, an announcement was made at various levels that the federal government was going to construct more than forty state-of-the-art hospitals in different parts of the country during next three years. This was duly appreciated by one and all as quite a welcome and appreciable step in the right direction.
As per reports, these new hospitals were going to be established in densely-populated, deprived or marginalised areas of Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pukhtoonkhah (KP), Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Construction n of these new hospitals preferably in the rural areas mostly will obviously go a long way in reducing the pressure and over-crowding of patients in the existing hospitals in the rural areas.
Somehow, no follow up statement has been made in this regard so far. While felicitating the federal government and praying for early construction it is pointed out that delay in any further announcement as to where these new hospitals are to be located and when construction work is going to commence is creating doubts in the minds of the people.
It is earnestly requested that the already delayed announcement about these hospitals should be made without wasting any further time along with location of these state of the art new hospitals in Punjab, Sindh, KP, Balochistan and elsewhere across the country and whether any new hospital out of these will also be established in Islamabad as well.
Undoubtedly more and more new hospitals are needed all over the country, in rural and urban areas, to cater to healthcare requirements of increasing population, the federal and provincial governments will also do lot of good if they continue paying due attention also to further improving the prevailing conditions in the existing hospitals ensuring the patients not only get timely treatment but are also provided free medicines as well.
BILAL NASIR
Islamabad
