GUJAR KHAN: Adviser to the Chief Minister Punjab on Health retired Maj Gen Dr Azhar Mahmood Kiani on Saturday expressed shock and disappointment over healthcare facilities available to the residents of Pind Dadan Khan. Dr Kiani, a cardiologist, after assuming the office experienced the ordeal of traveling on the 100-km dismantled road to Pind Dadan Khan to inaugurate a polio vaccination drive on Saturday. The highway has been rendered impassable after it was dismantled by the contractor of the road’s dualisation project. He was told by local people public that a large number of vacancies of medical officers and specialists had been lying vacant in the local hospital for a long time, adding many patients had lost their lives on the broken road while being shifted to the district hospital in Jhelum. Dr Kiani asked the chief executive officer (CEO) of the District Health Authority Dr Mazhar Iqbal about the issues. The CEO told him that posting of medical officers, cardiologists, surgeons and other specialists had become an issue for the management and twice a week an anesthetist from the DHQ hospital Jhelum was requested to assist the existing staff in conducting planned surgeries. The CEO also said emergency surgeries suffered in the absence of anesthetists and surgeons. Dr Kiani volunteered his own services to visit the hospital and examine cardiac patients once in a month. He directed authorities of the primary and secondary healthcare department to take immediate measures for providing medical staff as well as medicines and other facilities in the hospital. He said interviews for the recruitment of 500 permanent medical specialists in the province were scheduled for the next week, and they would be posted in hospitals facing acute shortage of medical staff in hospitals like the THQ Pind Dadan Khan. Talking to media, the adviser to the chief minister said, “We have to provide road links to people and ensure health cover to the cut-off population of the tehsil.” He said medical officers used to deny postings to Pind Dadan Khan due to its backwardness. He appealed to the residents to motivate medical graduates hailing from Pind Dadan Khan to come and serve at their hometown hospital. It may be noted that the establishment of a trauma centre was approved in Tobah town of Pind Dadan Khan by former federal minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, but its funds have been stopped for over two years, and only a grey structure could be constructed. Residents have also urged Dr Kiani to take notice of the delay in the establishment of the Tobah trauma centre and help in getting funds released for its earliest completion.