In a recent meeting in Islamabad, the Federal Ombudsman, M. Salman Faruqi, ordered Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) to supply medicines free of cost to all patients regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, or any other discriminating factors from the 24th of March of this year.
This was an attempt to extend accessible healthcare to all patients of the country and be a model for other healthcare institutions to do the same, PIMS having the country’s largest hospital’s administration. This move towards an aspect of freer healthcare will improve the standards of living by a great deal and lower the infant mortality rate, among other things.
The committee has come up with about fifty other suggestions on how to make the administration and day-to-day running of the hospital smoother. These were taken into consideration by the Ombudsman who felt they were serious enough and that the committee had worked very hard and so these reforms should be implemented as soon as possible.
Further, M. Salman Faruqi also noted that there were about nine hundred and one vacancies in the hospital and these need to be filled for the efficient running of the hospital. This is also imperative for the swift implementation of the reforms proposed by the committee.
There are also some problems within the administration that can be rectified without spending too much money or any at all in certain circumstances because some of these problems are actually just due to the lethargy and laziness of the people in charge of these services. Better standards of cleanliness, a biometric system and improvement in other things will help greatly and the budget can then be focused on free medicines.
With the enactment of these reforms, the hospital can be run smoother and being a government-run hospital, people will start having more faith in government-run institutions, hopes M. Salman Faruqi.
Great Work :
i hope it works in a right way, for some heavily cost injections, PIMS should also provide free of cost, not like ponston, penadol such medicines free.
Punjab Govt is already giving free medicine to ER and OPD Patients.
I think better to reduce the price rather than giving free to not let people abuse this facility
The hospital staff thinks that now because medicine is free, its their property to do whatever they want, such as:
1. Sell to outside medical stores
2. Store for relatives
3. Sell in black
4. Degrade poor people.
Also, need a mcanism to make sure the actual needy is beneficial.