UMERKOT: Sindh Minister for Health Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho has dismissed complaints about poor and inadequate facilities in government hospitals in Thar claiming that the quality of healthcare is not as bad as at other public sector facilities across the country.

She reiterated the official claim refusing to attribute unabated deaths of infants to malnutrition and instead blaming early marriages, unskilled midwives, illiterate and untrained mothers and “carelessness” in having a healthy intake during pregnancy, for the rising mortality rate of newborns in Umerkot and Tharparkar.

The minister, who is sister of former president and co-chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party Asif Ali Zardari and wife of former health secretary Fazlullah Pechuho, was talking to journalists during her visit to Umerkot Civil Hospital on Saturday.

She said that early marriages led to birth of premature kids who were unable to resist diseases and were often swallowed by death sooner or later.

She appealed to people to adopt birth control practices, avoid early marriages and get services of skilled midwives and birth attendants to decrease mortality rate of infants and expecting mothers.

She said that state of affairs at the civil hospital was not as poor as she had imagined and claimed the poor quality of healthcare at government hospitals was mainly because the province had not had any funds to improve the system before the passage of 18th Amendment.

She said the federal government used to sit on all the funds and dole them out to smaller provinces hence no development could be made in the public sector healthcare.

The previous government of the PML-N also failed to release the required and agreed upon share in funds under the National Finance Commission award to the province which led to governance problems, she said.

She said the federal government should announce a special package for Karachi because the metropolitan city was inhabited by people from all four provinces whose entire burden was borne by Sindh alone.

The minister said that Thar was ready to help resolve the nagging energy problem of the country; the federal government therefore should also put in its share in the development of Thar.

She announced the government would set up a unit of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Umerkot where scores of deaths from cardiac arrest were reported.

She said the dialysis centre at the hospital would be made functional and admitted to shortage of gynaecologists, anaesthetists and paediatricians. Their posts would be filled on a priority basis, she said.

MITHI: Dr Pechuho told media persons during a visit to Mithi Civil Hospital that the government was facing financial constraints because the Centre failed to release the province’s share from NFC award, which delayed provision of more modern facilities in Thar hospitals.

She said that media was misreporting about the state of hospitals in Thar and was not giving due coverage to the government’s sincere efforts for providing quality healthcare facilities.

She said that Sindh government was recruiting thousands of lady health visitors and a large number of them would be posted in Thar after being trained.

Dr Pechuho said the government would soon announce a Thar drought mitigation policy to provide required facilities to the desert region in coming months.

Many patients and their relatives complained about lack of life-saving drugs and other medicines in the civil hospital and the minister assured them that she would not tolerate any dereliction on the part of officials concerned.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2018