PESHAWAR: The government has outsourced six health facilities in as many tribal districts to private organisations to improve their performance and provide better diagnostic and treatment services to the patients.

Three non-governmental organisations, including Medical Emergency Resilience Foundation (Merf), Trans Continental and Nida, have been selected after completion of a long process started in September last year, according to of ficials.

Merf has been offered to run four hospitals and Transcontinental and National Integrated Development Association (Nida) one health f acility each.

A total of 10 firms with experience in healthcare applied and nine of them qualified technically while three of them were selected after final bidding.

`These organisations will run the hospitals in former Federally Administered Tribal Areas under the public-private partnership initiative with strict monitoring and audit system,` said of ficials.

They said that acceptance letters were dispatched to the firms by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Foundation after which proper agreements would be signed with them. The contract period will be three years during which these firms will get routine budget from the government as well as use the government`s staff to show performance with regard to improvement in patients` care.

The agreements to be signed with the contracting parties will include all terms and conditions under which they will work strictly in line with the government`s policy of giving free services to the people.

According to of ficials Type D hospitals Toikhula and Mola Khan Srai Sarokai in South Waziristan, Type D Hospital Dogar Kurram, Mamad Gat in Mohmand, Type D Hospital Darazinda in former frontier region of Dera Ismail Khan and Type D Hospital Ghiljo in Orakzai tribal district have been contracted out.

Sources in health department said that government allocated Rs900 million budget for outsourcing the facilities, according to which each of the hospital would receive Rs150 million per year.

`The contracting firms will be required to recruit additional staf f and fulfil the healthcare needs of the area where the respective hospitals are located. They will make sure that the basic services are available,` said of ficials.

The government has been facing an uphill task to put brakes on absenteeism of staf f in the erstwhile Fata because most people stayed away from duty and received salaries at home due to terrorism there.

`Terrorism has vanished and there is complete peace due to which the government has hired the private firms to run the facilities effectively,` said the officials. Following merger of the ex-Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the government has expedited the process to initially hand over six health outlets in tribal districts to private firms to benefit the people.

There are 9,000 employees in 979 health facilities in tribal districts but out of 108 posts of specialists, 80 are vacant. More than half of 50 sanctioned positions of women medical officers are also unfilled in tribal districts.

Officials said that all the contracted out health facilities, except the one in Dera Ismail Khan, were built by Pakistan Army with purpose-built structures but there was an acute problem of staff shortage.

The complaints by people of tribal districts prompted the authorities to go for public-private partnership and bring improvement in patients` care.