‘Lady health workers programme should be made stronger’

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Health recommended strengthening the Lady Health Workers (LHWs) Programme and providing regular funding to ensure continuous service delivery, especially in the remote areas of the country.

The committee, which met with Senator Kalsoom Perveen in the chair on Friday, also called for increasing the monthly stipend of the LHWs from the present paltry Rs 3,000 to 6,000. It also asked for taking measures for regular monitoring and evaluation of the programme.

It recommended that in areas where middle-pass LHWs were not available due to backwardness and poverty, women without any formal education may be inducted but given proper training for handling the job.

The committee was informed that only doctors serving in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) had been allowed permanent induction, whereas doctors serving in the Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH) had been denied this privilege.

The committee, while taking a serious note of this discrimination, unanimously recommended that all the nine deputed doctors from various provinces serving in the FGSH for the last many years should be inducted forthwith on the same analogy applied earlier to the PIMS doctors.

The committee was apprised that these doctors had been serving in this hospital for the last several years under the Wedlock policy wherein the serving spouses were to be posted at one station. The committee also expressed its deep concern over media reports regarding supply of spurious drugs to most of the government hospitals in the country.

It especially referred to one case of the supply of large quantity of Paracetamol by a Lahore-based firm, which turned out to be counterfeit upon laboratory test. It urged the government to hold a thorough probe into the matter.

The committee, while discussing the import of 1,000 medicines of various kinds from China, including lifesaving ones, directed the health ministry to completely review the process of registration of imported medicines. It also associated two members of the Committee Senators Haseeb Khan and Dr Khatomal to help the ministry in undertaking the review process.

The committee, however, observed that the import of drugs should not harm the local industry and that the ministry should pursue such policies that may help flourish the local pharmaceutical industry.

Earlier, the committee lauded the government for amicably resolving the issue of the FGSH expansion through the Argentina Park by taking all stakeholders into confidence, including the Government of Argentine. The meeting was attended by Senators Rehana Yahya Baloch, Abdul Haseeb Khan, Dr Khatomal Jewan, Abdul Razak Thahim and others. Link...