The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has started homework to operate the underutilized primary and secondary healthcare facilities in some districts of the province under Public Private Partnership (PPP) in accordance with prevailing laws.
The purpose of the initiative is the provision of better healthcare facilities to the people at grass-root level and improvement in overall service delivery in primary and secondary health facilities.
This was told in a meeting held here the other day with Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan in the chair, said an official handout issued here on Thursday.
Provincial Health Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Principal Secretary to CM Amjad Ali Khan, Secretary Establishment Zakir Afridi, Secretary Law Abid Majeed, Secretary Health Tahir Orakzai and other relevant quarters of Health Department attended the meeting. The meeting reviewed reforms initiatives under taken in the health sector.
The meeting took stock of the position impacts of reforms introduced, and deliberated upon matters related to further improve the healthcare service delivery system in the province. The meeting decided in principle to outsource the janitorial as well security services across all the secondary healthcare facilities and run the infections waste management system under PPP mode in the secondary healthcare facilities.
Moreover, it was also decided in principle to run the diagnostic and pharmacy service under PPP mode on need basis. However, all such matters will be presented before the provincial cabinet for any kind of final decision.
The meeting was told that, some of the healthcare facilities in few far flung districts of the province were already being run under public private partnership where service delivery had improved substantially.
In order to overcome the shortage of doctors in the healthcare centers of far flung areas, the meeting deliberated on matters pertaining to facility based contract hiring of doctors and made important decisions were made.
The chief minister termed provision of quality healthcare facilities to people as one of the priority areas of his government said that besides introducing massive reforms in health sector, the provincial government was also spending huge resources to ensure provision of quality health care services at local level.
He added that, due to pragmatic steps of the incumbent provincial government, health sector has been improved. Considerably, but still there is more need for improvement for which the health department needed to work out of the box.
