Health Minister Dechen Wangmo said that as promised the government would take the health services that are available at national referral hospital to regional referral hospitals, those services that are available at the regional referral hospital’s to dzongkhag hospitals, and the services available at dzongkhag hospitals to gewogs.

 This was in response to Nanong-Shumar MP Lungten Namgyel’s question at the National Assembly’s question hour session on January 15.

Lungten Namgyel said that although it would be challenging to achieve these targets, the minister could inform the house on the status of the Druk Nyamrup Tshopa’s pledge.

Lyonpo said that currently most of the BHUs in all the 205 gewogs did not have a doctor and facilities to provide services like blood tests, ultrasound, and X-ray.

She said that when a patient visited health centre, the health staff there gave the patient paracetamol and was told to come back after three days if he did not get well. “After three days, the patient is referred to a nearby hospital for a blood test. This is the current situation.”

Lyonpo said it was important that there was a paradigm shift in healthcare. “If we are to have a healthy population in the future, it is important to provide quality healthcare services.”

“Soon after the government took office, we worked on it and we now have a flagship programme for the health sector,” said Lyonpo.

Various factors like how to provide the health services and identifying the gaps in providing health services to all, among others, were considered while working on the flagship programme for the sector.

“DNT wishes to provide quality healthcare services to the people,” Lyonpo said.

Dechen Tshomo