By Our staff Reporter KARACHI - Former principal of Dow Medical College and renowned anaesthetist Prof S. Tipu Sultan has been appointed as the first chairperson of the Sindh Healthcare Commission. A decision to this effect was taken at the Sindh Healthcare Commission's maiden meeting held here the other day. Provincial Secretary Health Ahmed Bakhsh Narejo presided over the meeting in place of Minister for Health Jam Mahar Dahar who could not make it owing to his preoccupation. Districts' health commissioners, vice chancellor of Jinnah Sindh Medical University (JSMU) Prof Tariq Rafi and a representative of College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan (CPSP) attended the meeting. The meeting also decided to recommend the name of a serving government officer of grade 19 or 20 to Sindh government for appointing him as chief executive of the commission. The Healthcare Commission will have its secretariat at Karachi, while its regional offices, to be headed by district health commissioners, will be set up in major cities of the province. The aim behind setting up the Healthcare Commission is to make provision for the improvement, access, equity, and quality of healthcare services, to ban quackery in all its forms and manifestations and to provide ancillary matters. The Sindh Healthcare Commission Act, 2013 will apply to healthcare establishments, public or private hospitals, semi-government and autonomous organisations. Prof Tipu Sultan, who had also served as medical superintendent of Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) and as the founding principal of Bahria University Medical & Dental College, told Medical News that the Healthcare Commission's first meeting has demanded of the government to allocate funds for setting up its secretariat and regional offices so that it may start functioning as soon as possible. With the setting up of the healthcare commission, all medical and dental colleges, laboratories, blood banks and other health services providing organisations of the province will have to register with the commission, he said, adding that the other task of the commission will be to regulate pharmacies across the province. It may be pointed out that the Healthcare Commission was formed following Sindh Assembly enacted a law called "The Sindh Healthcare Commission Act, 2013".
