With just a few days left for the State to go for polls, the campaign pitch in Punjab has reached its peak. In Gurdaspur, BJP candidate Vinod Khanna intensified his campaign on Thursday. Addressing corner meetings in Gurdaspur area, he spoke about the poor health services and infrastructure in the Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Batala areas. “Healthcare is utmost important. The saying, ‘health is wealth’ is core to our existence,” he said. The region is deprived of specialised 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, will he travel all the way to Amritsar,” Khanna questioned, adding, “I want to take up healthcare issues on priority.” “My promise is to establish specialised 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.
Khanna charged the incumbent MP Pratap Singh Bajwa of turning a blind eye to the issue of health facilities. “Why didn’t he use his MPlAD funds to establish hospitals or maternity homesIJ Where was he when our brothers and sisters suffered due to lack of proper healthcareIJ” Khanna asked.