-Calls for telemedicine clinics to facilitate healthcare in remote areas
By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi on Friday terming corruption a major challenge said it was the collective responsibility of all sections of society to discourage corrupt practices and support the government’s efforts.
In a meeting with Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal here at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the president called for more measures to eliminate the menace of corruption from society and promote transparency and accountability in the governance system.
The Chairman presented NAB’s Annual Report 2020 to the President and briefed him about his organization’s performance which had recovered Rs. 323.29 billion during 2020. He said NAB received 24,706 complaints and disposed of 30,405 including the under-process complaints from the previous year.
He said NAB processed 878 complaint verifications besides conducting 369 inquiries, 175 investigations and filed 136 references before the Accountability Courts during the past year. He apprised that the overall success ratio of prosecution was 66 percent during the year 2020. Appreciating the performance of NAB, the President said that the organization had done a great job by waging a battle against corrupt elements.
He emphasized the need for further intensifying efforts to ensure across the board accountability to fulfil the vision of corruption-free Pakistan. He assured the Chairman of his full support in strengthening the organization to stamp corruption out of society. The NAB is required to submit Annual Report of its performance to the President under the NAB Ordinance, 1999.
Besides, Dr Arif Alvi on Friday underlined the need for establishing primary healthcare telemedicine clinics to provide equitable facilities to the population living in remote areas of Pakistan.
He said that the tele-health services had played a very useful role in disseminating information regarding Covid-19 pandemic by providing guidelines and educating the people about the disease. He underscored the need for investing in tele-medicine and strengthening the capacity of health professionals in the fields of public health and artificial intelligence to analyze various datasets and predict outbreaks and epidemics. The President made these remarks while chairing a follow-up meeting on tele-health here at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.
The meeting was attended by SAPM on National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSRC), Dr. Faisal Sultan, Secretary NHSRC, Aamir Khawaja, Consultant, Digital Technology, Ms. Tania Aidrus, Director General Health, Dr Rana Muhammad Safdar, Director General, National Information Technology Board (NITB), Faisal Iqbal Ratyal and other senior government officials.
Ministry of NHSRC gave a presentation about tele-health and proposed various solutions for the promotion of tele-health in Pakistan. The President said that there was a need to transform health delivery sector of the country by using digital infrastructure to ensure connectivity among health professionals and patients to provide consultative services to the latter.
