Karachi:Sindh Secretary Health Rizwan Ahmed on Tuesday made it clear that evening medical colleges and medical education in the evening was just a proposal and no decision had been taken yet in this regard.
“The government has only asked for the feedback on (start of) evening medical colleges and no decision has been taken yet in this regard. There will be some deliberations in on this issue and without taking everybody on board, no such decision would be made”, he said while speaking at an Iftaar dinner hosted by the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) here at a local hotel.
The provincial health secretary maintained that although the PMA was an authority on medical education but it too was seeing the issue with its own perspective while the government wanted to listen to all stakeholders on in this issue and take a unanimous decision.
Commenting on unrest over the devolution of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), NICH and NICVD, he made it clear that there should be no doubt in the minds of any person that these institutions are now devolved to the Sindh government.
“We also made it clear that the government of Sindh does not want them to run like other hospitals in the province and suggested autonomy for them as well as constitution of independent boards to run their affairs”, he informed but added that instead of considering the offers, a strike was observed during which even the emergency services were closed.
“There was no moral and legal justification for the strike and closure of emergency services. We have not asked the employees and doctors to withdraw their case against devolution but causing hardships to patients are unacceptable”, he warned.
Also holding the PMA accountable for the sufferings of the patients due to strike of the doctors, he deplored that the PMA did not publicly condemned the strike at the JPMC, NICH and NICVD and closure of emergency departments of these hospitals.
He made it clear that the Sindh government had provided budget to the devolved federal hospitals for three months and asked them to prepare their budgets, adding that all monetary requirements of the these institutes would be fulfilled by the government.
Regarding the draft bill prepared by the PMA for the protection of doctors and other related issues, he said some areas of the proposed draft bill needed more deliberations and after workout and consensus, it would be presented in the provincial assembly for making it a law.
Commenting on the promotions of the doctors, he told the PMA office-bearers that they were at different stages of approval and assured them the process of promotions of doctors would be expedited.
He acknowledged that lack of transparency in transfers and postings of doctors was an open secret but added if every doctor wants to serve in Karachi and Hyderabad, what could be done by the department in this regard.
“In future, health department will advertise posts and positions and the doctors will not be allowed to get transferred from the designated post before a certain period. If he or she still wants to be transferred from where he or she is working, they will have to resign for that”, he informed.
On the issue of security of doctors and security at hospitals, he said that this issue was inter-related with the overall situation in the country including overall security, economic and education in the country and without improvements in all these areas, this could not be resolved in isolation.
On the occasion, he informed that Sindh health department had sought permission from the federal government to allow it to merge all 14 vertical programmes in health that were devolved to provinces under the 18th amendment as there was a lot of overlapping in these vertical programmes.
“Vertical programmes never delivered anywhere in the world and in Pakistan too due to overlapping they are not very successful. We are asking for their merger to get better results from them”, he informed.
Earlier, Dr Idrees Adhi, Prof Tipu Sultan and Dr Samrina Hashmi and Dr Nighat Shah pointed out issues concerning the PMA including security situation at hospitals, evening medical colleges, lack of transparency in transfers, postings of the doctors, unrest at the JPMC, NICH and NICVD after their devolution etc.
Dr Nighat Shah in her presentation spoke on the growing maternal mortality rate in the province and asked for more proactive approach to bring it down.
Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, Secretary General of PMA Centre made it clear that PMA calls for resolving all the issues and conflicts through talks, not through agitation and unless doctors are compelled to do so and also made it clear that it never supported closure of emergency services at hospitals in any case.The news.
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