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LAHORE:
Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has urged experts and academics to come up with healthcare reforms that will allow the poor to get the same access to medical treatment as the rich and the connected.
It is unfortunate that while judges, generals, politicians, bureaucrats and the elite avail the best healthcare facilities inside and outside the country, the underprivileged are deprived of even basic treatment facilities. This unjust system will have to be changed and such a system devised under which medical facilities are available to all on an equitable basis, the chief minister said in a speech at the inauguration of the two-day Punjab Health Sector Reforms Conference.
The participants in the conference must seek to explain why rural and basic health centres have failed to provide adequate medical care, and whether mobile health units are a viable substitute, he said.
The previous government imported six mobile health units from Holland and deployed them in south Punjab, he said.
Sharif argued that lack of resources alone could not explain why the healthcare system in the country was ineffective, pointing out that some African countries and Cuba had very good medical coverage.
The chief minister noted that public hospitals had to hire foreign companies to service and maintain expensive medical equipment. The conference should look into the reason why a biomedical workshop has not been set up for repair and maintenance of the equipment, he said.
There should also be an effort to strengthen preventive healthcare measures, he added.
Going over his own governments healthcare plans for the next five years, he said that they would launch a health insurance card scheme, which is currently running as a pilot project in four districts. The government would continue providing free medicines at public hospitals, a programme which cost Rs26 billion in the last five years. A record Rs45 billion had been allocated to healthcare for 2013-14, he added.
The chief minister said that the lack of a measles vaccination campaign in recent years was criminal negligence and the ongoing epidemic, which has claimed hundreds of lives, was tragic. He added that the government was doing all it could to tackle the epidemic.
He also noted that there was a shortage of potable water and sanitation in much of the province, issues that many people brought up with him during his campaign visits to all areas of the Punjab ahead of the general elections.
Healthcare reforms: CM seeks equitable access to medical treatment – The Express Tribune
