PESHAWAR, Dec 4: Chief Minister Pervez Khattak on Wednesday expressed his anger over the continuing practice of quack doctors and availability of spurious drugs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and directed the health department authorities to take solid and effective action to curb the same on urgent basis.

Chairing a meeting of the health department at his office here, Mr Khattak also called for taking result-oriented steps to make up for the deficiency of staff in basic health units at union council and village level, ensuring all the required facilities of mother and child health care in the BHUs and reporting the same so that health facilities could be provided to people.

He said that local medical units should be made fully operational so that people, especially women, at far away areas could find basic health facilities at their doorstep.

Besides Provincial Minister for Health Shaukat Yousufzai and Rafaqatullah Babar, advisor to the CM, the meeting was attended by secretary health, director general health, principal secretary to chief minister and other concerned authorities, according to a handout.

The chief minister directed the quarters concerned to provide health care facilities available in big teaching hospitals to all the district headquarters hospitals of the province.

He said that all available financial resources would be utilised for the purpose.

However, he said that donor organisations were also willing to provide funds and facilities in this regard. He said that provision of quality health services to people in government hospitals and curbing spurious drugs and quacks was one of the top priorities of the PTI-led government.

Mr Khattak also directed the health minister to convene a meeting of the Health Regularity Authority (HRA) to ask the drug inspectors for honestly doing their duty of curbing spurious drugs. He said that there were complaints about the continued practice of quakes and availability of spurious drugs.

The chief minister observed that usually a drug inspector knew everything (about the sale of spurious drugs), but unfortunately these paid public servants sacrificed the public interest for petty personal gains. He maintained that they would deal with such elements through good governance.

He said that under the policy of reform the performance evaluation of all the departments had been started, but it seemed as if the health department was still dormant.

The chief minister said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was committed to giving relief to the people. He also took notice of the non-payment of salaries to the lady health workers in the province, but working under the federal government, for the last four months. He directed the finance department to pay their salaries from the provincial funds and adjust it after release of funds from the federal government. Bureau Report