Public health: ‘Trained midwives will deliver 90% babies from this year’

Target for contraceptives use set at 55 per cent, says Rehman.

LAHORE: Trained midwives are currently catering to 20 percent child deliveries in the province. The provincial government plans to bring up the percentage to 90 this year, Provincial Minister for Excise and Taxation Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman said on Sunday.

He was speaking to a delegation of doctors at his residence.

Rehman said use of contraceptives was prevalent in 36 percent of the province’s population. The government planned on promoting their use among up to 55 percent of the population this year.

Rehman said round the clock medical facilities would be provided in 700 basic health units across the province under the Punjab Health Reforms Roadmap.

He said in order to improve performance of district and tehsil headquarters hospitals, the government had allocated Rs1.41 billion in the budget for specialist doctors to incentivise service at these facilities. Rehman further said that the government had great respect for medical professionals and would redress all their grievances.

He said currently the government’s focus was on improvement of primary and preventive healthcare facilities (millennium development goals). Another area that the government was working on was improvement of maternal healthcare, he added.

Rehman said funds had been allocated in the health budget for provision of latest equipment and free medicines at public hospitals. He said with a budgetary allocation of Rs2.5 billion the government planned on starting a health insurance programme in the province.

Rehman said Rs3 billion had been allocated for construction of a state-of-the-art kidney and liver transplant institute in Lahore.

He said Rs1 billion had been allocated in the budget for provision of mobile health units across the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2015.