PESHAWAR: The government’s plan to strengthen primary and secondary level health facilities and provide treatment to the people at the local hospitals is yet to materialize despite a steep rise in the budgetary allocation and massive recruitment of doctors, according to official sources.
In the absence of proper monitoring at the district hospitals, patients continue to visit the tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar which not only adversely affect the treatment of the critically-ill patients but also cause economic losses to the people coming to cities.
Official sources said that the provincial health department appointed 3,000 doctors during the last four years to provide basic health services to the people.
However, they said, the situation remained the same as the patients had not developed trust in the primary and secondary health facilities in their respective districts.
During the past few years, the annual health budget had gone up to Rs65 billion from Rs35 billion and bulk of the amount was being spent on the salaries of staff and equipment. “Still there is little improvement as the three teaching hospitals in Peshawar receive 80 percent patients, who can be treated in their native hospitals,” they added.
The health department has also been awarding enhanced salaries to the doctors working in remote districts as an attempt to ensure their presence at the basic health units, rural health centers, and civil hospitals. However, there is no system in place to check the presence of health staff and people are yet to start benefiting from the measures taken by the government.
Officials said that health department provided equipment worth Rs2 billion to the peripheral hospitals during the past year on the proposals of medical superintendents of the district headquarters hospitals to put in place basic diagnostic services there.
According to them, the doctors working in far-flung areas receive double and triple salaries compared to their colleagues posted in Peshawar. They said that a hospital, which had two doctors one year ago, had then the services of six to eight doctors but the patients’ trust was yet to be developed.
The medical superintendents and district health officers, who control the district health system, have no authority to take action against the doctors as they can hold accountable paramedics, nurses, and Class-IV staff only.
“Even the provincial director-general health services lack powers to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the doctors for staying absent from their duty places,” said sources.
Officials said that the government could improve healthcare scenario by empowering the district health authorities to check absenteeism of doctors but the centralization of powers emboldened the doctors, who were certain that they could not face any action.
“Not only the patients suffer when they come to Peshawar for minor ailments but they also spend more amount as they are accompanied by at least two attendants here,” said the officials. As opposed to it, the patients can be treated for minor diseases at primary and secondary health facilities in their own areas and only those people, who are referred by the doctors out of needs, will have to visit Peshawar for treatment of their ailments.