Government is closing all people-friendly projects :Dr Yasmin Rashid

Lahore : Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman’s advisor on health Dr Yasmin Rashid has said the Shahbaz Sharif government’s plan to launch a programme of sending senior doctors to the district headquarters hospitals is actually a revival of previous government’s Punjab Safe Motherhood Initiative Project (PSMIP).

Addressing party workers belonging to medical community here on Friday, Dr Yasmin said the World Health Organisations had lauded the PSMIP, launched in 2003, for extending specialised obstetrics and gynecology services to pregnant mothers and new born children in peripheral areas in the province.

She said the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had a major point of providing quality healthcare services to the pregnant women and new born children but the project become prey of Shahbaz Sharif’s antagonist politics.

She said the Pakistan government was required under the MDGs commitment to minimise the mother and infant mortality rate by 2015. She said Pakistan could not achieve the target and earned bad name among the comity of nations. Still, she said the mother mortality rate stood at 14,000 out of 100,000 births.

Dr Yasmin said the commissioning of the Wazirabad Institute of Cardiology and Mian Mir Hospital also halted by the Shahbaz Sharif government – as a part of its antagonist politics. She said the incumbent government was closing all people-friendly projects and added that provision of healthcare services to masses was not in the priority list of the incumbent government.