Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Member of Parliament from Anantnag, (Retd) Justice Hasnain Masoodi, on Thursday conducted a tour of various health facilities in Awantipora town of district Pulwama.
During his hour’s long tour, he made a prolonged stopover at government primary health center (PHC) Awantipora.
On the occasion, Masoodi interacted with the patients and staff, who apprised him about the dearth of various equipment and medical and paramedical staff at the health facility. While interacting with the patients, Masoodi said since the PHC is located on Srinagar-Jammu highway, the area witnesses’ frequent accidents and injured are forced to be shifted to District Hospital Pulwama or SDH Pampore.
“Even the patients with minor injuries are referred to other hospitals in Srinagar or other adjoining districts. Successive regimes since 2015 have unfortunately ignored the lone health center and shelved its much needed up gradation to meet the ever increasing needs of the huge populace of Awantipora, Barsoo, Lethpora, Jawbhera, Noorpora, Buhu, and Kanji Nag. However the PHC fails to meet the expectations of the patients due to lack of staff, infrastructure and various key diagnostic facilities. Converting the said PHC into Trauma hospital will however go a long way in bringing much needed respite to the large populace living in the catchment area of the said PHC. I hope the concerned authorities will give the much needed face lift to the health facility on priority basis,” he said.
Masoodi also expressed concern over the delay in the construction work on proposed AIIMS coming up at Awantipora. He said that at a time construction at AIIMS Jammu is going on in full swing, the same proposed medical facility for Awantipora is not seeing any headway. He impressed upon the concerned agencies to remove all the bottlenecks in the early execution of the project so that the large populace in south and central Kashmir starts benefiting from it.
He also assessed the ongoing pace of vaccination in the villages and hamlets in Awantipora and impressed upon the local administration to work towards snapping out vaccine hesitancy among people.
