Sindh government has decided to take back the facility of free medical treatment from the patients visiting the government hospitals in the province and is likely to introduce "user charges" system under which all patients will have to pay for medical examination.
Three years ago the provincial government had introduced free medical treatment facility. Officials said the government is unable to take care of every patient because of shortage of funds, adding that the government hospitals will be run on the visiting patients' fee.
In this regard a high level meeting of health officials would be held on February 18, 2009, under the chairmanship of Special Secretary Health Captain Abdul Majid (Retd) to fix the user charges, officials sources at Sindh Health Department told Business Recorder on Tuesday.
They said: "the department has invited experts and Medical Superintendents of Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) Hyderabad, Chandka Medical College (CMC) Larkana and Peoples Medical College (PMC) Larkana for suggestions from these experts to fix user charges."
They said: "the introduction of user charges is not a new method adding two years ago all patients who visited government hospitals paid user charges." They said: "provincial health department has decided to impose user charges on health services, collect user charges by providing ambulance, CT Scan, MRI, X-Ray, Ultrasound and laboratory facilities."
They said: "thirty five percent of the collected amount would be deposited in government treasury, 35 percent for maintenance of machines and hospitals and the remaining thirty percent for providing facilities. They said: "the purpose of imposing user charges is to stop exploitation of government resources."
They said: "Sindh Health Department is facing immense difficulties due to late delivery of budget amount from provincial finance department." They said: "budget process starts from the month of February every year and announced in July while delivery of budget amount takes three to four months." They said: "the collected amount would be helpful in running government health institutions in these three to four months.
They said: "the only reason of delay in ongoing development works is late recovery of budget amount and a gap of three months for the payment to the contractors." Talking to Business Recorder, Secretary General Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) Dr Qaisar Sajjad said: "PMA would not accept this cruel step of government to withdraw medical facilities to the poor."
He said: "people are suffering due to increase in medicine prices and imposition of user charges would further increase the burden of poor patients. "Only those patients who can not buy medicines from medical stores visit government hospitals for availing free of cost medical facility but this harsh step of the government would increase their burden."
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