PESHAWAR: Health department has repatriated 35 doctors from Khyber Institute of Child Health as part of the ongoing rationalisation drive to depute staffers to their places of duty and improve patients’ care.

“To begin with, we have repatriated the services of 35 doctors, who have been posted in Khyber Institute of Child Health (Kich), which is yet to go operational. They have been sent to the places where their services are needed the most,” Ihtisham Ali, adviser to chief minister on health, told Dawn.

According to him, those doctors have been posted in Kich, which is still under-construction, for the past two years. “Recently, we repatriated services of 16 employees, including two doctors, to their parent departments from health department and the repatriation campaign is in progress,” he added.

He said that in every rural health centre, the department had deployed on average 35 doctors but most of them stayed away from their duty places and worked somewhere else while drawing salaries regularly. He said that not only doctors but there were nurses, paramedics, clerks and support staff, who didn’t perform their primary duty that impacted patients’ care.

Adviser to CM has ordered rationalisation of health staff

“We have a lot of staffers, who can provide better health services to people if they are posted at their places of duty. Now, the effort has started to rationalise the staff,” said the health adviser.

Sources in health department told Dawn that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had more than 2,550 health facilities including 26 district headquarters (DHQs) hospitals but only 30 per cent patients visited public sector hospitals mainly owing to shortage of staff despite the fact that the department had more than 60,000 employees.

They said that basic health units (BHUs) were the basis for primary healthcare but people seldom went there as the staffers remained absent. They said that staffers in BHUs mostly sat in the offices of the respective district health officers (DHOs) illegally and took salaries regularly.

Sources said that health department was collecting data from independent monitoring unit (IMU), which provided details of staff, medicines and other facilities in hospitals on monthly basis. They said that statistics provided by the IMU gave a clear idea to high-ups of health department regarding the issues of staff, medicines, diagnostic and other services in hospitals.

They said that in many cases, it was proved that the staffers posted in primary care centres sat in the offices of DHOs as they enjoyed the support of senior officers or local politicians. As a result, patients suffered, they added.

Sources said that in the light of the rampant absenteeism, the health adviser directed repatriation of all staffers to their duty places in October of current year. They said that the process of repatriation of health employees had begun on the directives of health adviser. As per plan, details about such employees were already available and health department was in the process to send them to their places of duty for their original assignments, they added.

“Once we strengthen basic health facilities, the number of diseases will come down and load on secondary and tertiary care hospitals will decline. Presently, all the 10 medical teaching institutions (MTIs) in the province are flooded with patients because they have lost confidence in the primary and secondary hospitals. They directly arrive at MTIs, which are meant for most chronically-ill patients,” they said.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2024