Qadir Patel ‘fully capable’ of running national health services, claims Dr Azra

Expressing her confidence in the leadership qualities of Federal Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel, Sindh health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho said Friday he was “fully capable” of running the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSR&C), arguing that it is not necessary for someone to be an expert of the area for which they have been made responsible in the government.

“Political will is more important to run a government department or a ministry than having any professional expertise, or management and leadership skills,” she said while addressing a news conference in connection with World Immunisation Week 2022.

“Abdul Qadir Patel is a good choice for being the federal health minister, who knows how to run a ministry and there is a team of experts at the ministry and in the party to help him out on technical issues,” Pechuho said.

Accompanied by Sindh Health Secretary Zulfiqar Shah, Sindh Assembly Parliamentary Health Secretary Qasim Soomro, Federal EPI Program Manager Akram Shah, Director General Health Sindh Dr Jumman Bahoto, Project Director EPI Sindh Dr Irshad Memon, she said every year around two million children needed to be vaccinated against vaccine-preventable diseases in the province.

Advising public and private schools not to give admissions to children whose routine vaccination was not complete, the provincial health minister stressed that every school administration should see the vaccination chart of a child whose parents wanted him or her to be enrolled at the school, and if the child was not vaccinated, the school administration should ask parents to get the child vaccinated.

“Children under the age of two years have the weakest immunity and they need to be given vaccines against preventable diseases. Our EPI program is offering 12 vaccines of international quality free of charge, so it is the responsibility of the parents to get their children vaccinated.”

Pechuho maintained that World Immunisation Week is observed in the last week of April every year and its objective is to emphasise the importance of vaccination of children, which protect the children from death and disability. She added that vaccines have eliminated from the world several diseases which are still killing people in Pakistan.

She claimed that so far 805 confirmed cases of measles had been reported in Sindh this year, and the disease had killed 23 children. She warned parents that measles was a highly infectious disease, which could even affect children with weak immunity.

“So it is my humble request that parents should get their children vaccinated against all the diseases and get all the boosters to their children so that they have the immunity to fight these dreaded diseases.”

‘PMC to be challenged’

Commenting on the recent announcement of the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) regarding a centralised MDCAT, the health minister said the Sindh government waned an amendment in the PMC Act 2020 so that the MDCAT could be held like it was being conducted before the law was adopted.

She said the provinces should be allowed to conduct their own tests for admissions to public and private medical colleges. “We are going to approach the apex courts against the PMC, while this issue will also be raised and resolved in the parliament,” she announced.

Commenting on the hospitals and health facilities surrendered by the health NGO HANDS in District Malir, she said there were complaints against HANDS, after which it was not issued funds. She said that now these facilities would be taken over and run by the PPHI.

When asked why the Sindh health department was not providing funds for the Poverty Alleviation Initiative to run the children’s hospital in Karachi, she claimed that the NGO was not submitting an independent audit report, so it was not being given the funds to run the health facility. “But the Child Life Foundation is doing a good job by running the emergency rooms at health facilities as per expectations of the people and the department,” she added.