LAHORE: The Punjab government`s `first-ever` plan to introduce teaching faculty at the Mayo Hospital, Lahore, has suffered a major blow when the finance department rejected the proposal declaring it `out of yardstick`.

Under the [proposed] scheme, the Mayo`s [emergency] ward wasto be converted into `emergency medicine department` where the patients were to be provided with treatment by the senior teaching faculty, including professors and associate professors.

This emergency department was also proposed as the first one in any government hospital to start its own postgraduate training programme.

Through these programmes, an attempt was made to produce for the first time `emergency medicine specialists` in Pakistan at public sector level.

Earlier, the medics of this `highly-paid` specialty were being produced in two private sector hospitals of the country.

The demand for emergency med-icine specialists have been growing in Middle East and other countries and Pakistan was among those where these specialists were rarely available to cater to the [emergency] needs.

In order to materialise this scheme, a SNE (schedule of new expenditure) had been forwarded to the finance department to sanction 272 new positions, including 165 for teaching faculty alone.

It is the first-ever government hospital which was to be manned by the highly trained and qualified teaching faculty through this proposal, an official privy to the information told Dawn.

He said a professor, six associate professors, 11 assistant professors, 12 senior registrars, etc. were demanded in the SNE for the newly proposed `medical emergency department.

However, he regretted, the finance department rejected the summary to sanction the hiring of teaching staf f.

He said the idea was derived during a visit of a Pakistan delegation, including health experts, toTurkey where they had inspected the healthcare system to introduce the same in Pakistan.

Later, the Punjab government had given the go-ahead to set up `first emergency medicine department` at the Mayo Hospital by replacing the old [emergency] unit where junior doctors to the level of house ofhcers and postgraduate trainees have been providing care to critical patients since decades.

The finance department, however, approved 107 positions for the [proposed] department.

These positions were mostly forthe junior medics, technicians and other employees, he said, adding the health department officials were likely to take up the issue with the chief minister or other relevant authorities.The official said the health department had also forwarded a proposal for the approval of budget worth Rs148 million for the [same] emergency department.

The finance department partially accorded approval [to the plan] and the health authorities would purchase equipment and missing facilities.