Streamlining healthcare

Khyber Pukhtunkhwa government has finalised a plan of setting up Intensive Care Units for the treatment new born babies in category-A and B hospitals. The plan if approved will cost Rs. 2 billion and funds to the tune of Rs. 10 million will be released in the next fiscal year. At present no such facility is available even in the teaching hospitals except putting the new born babies on ventilators in the children wards. If it is established on priority basis it will be a quantum leap forward towards reducing the infant mortality rate in the province for which early release of the required amount of funds in each fiscal year will be essential.

Another worth appreciation decision of the government is putting in place the facility of diagnoses and treatment of patients who suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes in the primary healthcare system. For this purpose an allocation of Rs.25 million shall be provided in the health department budget for the next fiscal year. Initially, the facility shall be established on experimental basis. The primary driver behind this decision is the reports that health department received about the fast increase in the number of patients of these two diseases. The treatment of patients who develop “type one” diabetes will require diagnoses by endocrinology specialist doctors in the MTI hospitals and their referral by doctors at BHUs and in RHCs will be inevitable instead of putting them on treatment at the primary healthcare level.