KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Thursday directed the health department to work out a plan to start non-stop pediatric OPD in all the government hospital from 8 am to 8 pm.
He issued this directive while chairing a meeting in which ChildLife Foundation, a government partner, gave him a presentation on child health in Sindh.
The foundation told the chief minister that as many as 250 children under the age of five die every year. They added that around 21,000 children are brought in hospitals every day and 43 percent children belong to poor families, therefore they face different health issues.
On this, the chief minister said that he is worried about the health of children whether they belong to poor or well of families.
“It becomes the responsibility of the government to provide, free of cost and non-stop health services to everyone.
The Foundation told the chief minister that by the end of April 2018, all the teaching government hospitals in Karachi would have full-fledged separate child health service facilities. Similar facilities are being developed in Larkana Shaikh Zaid Hospital, Jamshoro, Shaheed Benazirabad and in various other districts.
The chief minister said that the OPD for children is operated in in government hospitals from 8 am to 2 pm and after that, the children have to go to emergency to be checked. “I want children OPD from 8 am to 8p and then ailing children could be taken to emergency,” he said.
The chief minister also directed the health department to prepare a software for keeping date-wise, time-wise, name-wise record of OPD, emergency and admitted patients with the medicines and lab test facilities be provided to the patients.
