PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister (CM) Pervez Khattak has directed the authorities in the health and finance departments of the province to ensure the complete provision of staff and machinery in the hospitals all over the province in order to ensure efficient health delivery services to the common man.
He said this while chairing the sixth stocktaking meeting on the health department here at Peshawar CM House. Additional Chief Secretary Shehzad Bangash, SSU head Sahibzada Saeed, administrative secretaries of departments concerned and other authorities concerned attended the meeting.
The meeting was briefed about the current status of key actions in the health department.
The meeting was told that concrete initiatives were taken to overcome the shortage of staff and machinery in hospitals. It was told that the current measures in health sector reflected a good progress and achievements of desired targets in most of the areas, especially in case of human resource development where recruitment of the required numbers of medical officers, nurses and paramedics were almost accomplished by the health department.
Similarly, 2,850 LHWs, 111 LHS, 1,640 CMWs, 318 vaccinators and 45 WMOs have been appointed under the integrated health project while other activities of the said projects are on track. At a district level, 800 specialists have been posted and remaining 132 positions have been advertised to be filled soon.
Similarly, promotion cases of all general and management cadre doctors, specialists, nurses and paramedics have been cleared by PSB. At the same time, the revised APT rules of nurses and paramedics have already been notified.
In the area of strengthening of health care service delivery, especially under the integrated project, 26 stabilization centres and 20 comprehensive EMoNC service centres have been established at DHQ hospitals, while 24 district health plans have been prepared and the budget has been released to the districts to provide MHSDP services under the same project. The targets were also achieved in other components/ projects to strengthen the health care delivery system.
The chief minister appreciated the progress made so far by the health department and desired to put in additional efforts in areas where the pace of achievement is somewhat lagging behind the scheduled timelines.
The health secretary assured that the set objectives in the identified disciplines would be accomplished by the end of this fiscal year whereby all the healthcare establishments will be fully equipped and staffed to deliver properly.
The chief minister directed to expedite work in order to ensure the availability of staff and machinery in the hospitals. He urged the high ups to also ensure complete attendance of staff, as well as fulfilling all the requirements of hospitals to make them accountable.
Khattak also said that he will personally visit the hospitals to check the service delivery.
In respect of delay in the provision of Sehat Insaf Cards to special groups including senior citizens and disabled persons, the chief minister expressed his concern and desired to have a joint meeting with health and social welfare department immediately. He also directed that the social welfare department should come prepared in next meeting in the context of the identified information.
He said that independent monitoring unit (IMU) has been assigned an additional task to monitor the facilities managed by population welfare department in this regard.