Pathankot /Gurdaspur/ Batala, 24 april–With just a few days left for the state to go for polls, the campaign pitch in Punjab has reached its peak. In Gurdaspur, the BJP candidate, 3 times MP and former cabinet minister shri Vinod Khanna has neatly chalked out his plans for each sector and leaves no stone unturned to dig deeper into issues and offer solutions.
Addressing corner meetings in Gurdaspur area today, he spoke of the poor health services and infrastructure in the Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Batala areas ‘Health care is utmost important. The saying, health is wealth is core to our existence. It is sad that we do not have speciality health clinic in our region,’ he said. The region is deprived of specialist hospitals and one has to travel to Amritsar and Chandigarh for complex treatments and operation.
‘This is appalling, god forbid one has a cardiac arrest, he/she so travel all the way to Amritsar ?’, an angry Khanna added. ‘I want to take up health care issues on priority soon after assuming office’, he further said.
‘My promise is to establish specialized hospitals where free treatment and medicines are provided for economically backward people,’ he said. Whatever the deficiency in the registration of “vital statistics”, the high death rate as well as high infant mortality rate in the region are indicative as much of the inadequacy and the low quality of health services available to the population in the region. ‘There is an urgent need to expand the health facilities at a faster rate than the rate of growth of population.’ Khanna added.
Shri Vinod Khanna has also received full support from the doctors association of Pathankot. ‘I have assured them that their issues will be resolved’ he said.
The incumbent MP Shri Pratap Singh Bajwa during his tenure developed a blind eye to the issue of lack of health facilities. ‘Why didn’t he use his MPLAD funds to establish hospitals or maternity homes? where was he when our brothers and sisters suffered during to lack of proper health care’, Mr Khanna added
Drug addiction is also an important issue in the region, and Khanna promised that awareness, de addiction centres and programmes will be started with immediate effect.