Kathmandu, January 29

Minister for Health, Deepak Bohara said the government would not have any financial burden if it provided monthly livelihood allowance to patients suffering from kidney failure, cancer and paralysis due to spinal injury.

Speaking at the 22nd Anniversary of Shahid Gangalal National Heart Centre today, Minister Bohara claimed that providing Rs 5000 monthly livelihood allowance would help patients without causing any financial burden to the country.

He said, “The fund provided to patients of life-threatening diseases has been provided from tax that has been collected from tobacco products and its business. For the livelihood fund, the government doesn’t need to allocate separate budget from the national budgets.”

He said that the heart centre has been providing quality health service to heart patients and it should upgrade services.

Launching the annual report of the hospital, Dr Jyotindra Sharma, director of the hospital said that though the hospital has been providing services to all the people it lacks adequate human resources. He said, “Due to lack of academy of health science, the hospital has been lacking human resources. With the academy, we can produce adequate human resources required for the hospital.”

We have sent a letter to the Minister of Health to establish an Academy of Health Science in the hospital, he said. Similarly, at the programme, Pushpa Chaudhary, secretary at MoH said the hospital has been providing free health service, especially to underprivileged people, children and the elderly. She said, “We are also working on 25-bed community hospital required at each local level.”