Minister Labour Punjab, Haji Ehsaan-ud-Din Qureshi has said that focus of the government is upon primary and protective healthcare to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). To achieve the targets, community midwifery homes will be established in far-flung areas of the province to provide basic health facilities to child & mother and look after their health as well as minimise maternal & neonatal mortality rate during the childbirth.
He said that huge funds are being allocated for provision of state of the art healthcare facilities to the labourers and their families. While talking to a delegation of doctors and paramedics, Ehsaan-ud-Din said that the department is appointing trained lady health workers, LHVs and community midwives at health centres, especially in the remote areas so that infants and mothers could be saved from fatal diseases, whereas LHWs are being appointed in the remote areas. He said that department is appointing gynaecologists at health centres in the remote areas to provide better healthcare facilities to the mothers.
He furthered that government is appointing gynaecologists in public sector of hospitals of the province and had focused on the health of infants and mothers and for this purpose free delivery services were being provided to the pregnant women at rural health centres.
The minister said that programmes launched for maternal and neonatal healthcare will ensure progress towards achieving MDGs in maternal and infant health. The specific objectives of these programmes are to reduce the under-five mortality rate to less than 65 per thousand live births by the year 2011 target 2015. He said that the provision of state-of-the-art healthcare facilities to the people especially labourers, is at the top of present government's agenda. In order to shift labourers to teaching hospitals swiftly, 20 new fully equipped with modern medical equipment ambulances have been handed over to the social security hospitals, he concluded.