Punjab launches mobile health programme for industrial workers, taking treatment to 4.6 million workers and their families, with 12 more districts by March

LAHORE: For an industrial worker in Punjab, treatment is about to stop meaning a day lost in a hospital queue. Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has launched the Social Security Mobile Health Programme, which will take medical care to more than 4.6 million registered workers at their workplaces — and to their families close to home. It begins in Lahore, Kasur and Sheikhupura.

The fleet is built for reach. It includes mobile hospitals, mobile clinics, a mobile dental hospital and a dedicated cardiac screening unit, while teams on motorcycles and scooters will carry medical kits, first-aid supplies and essential medicines along fixed routes. The mobile hospitals carry doctors, women doctors, nurses, laboratory and X-ray facilities, with telemedicine built in. At the launch, the chief minister inspected the mobile and dental units, met the medical staff, and later visited the outpatient department of Nawaz Sharif Social Security Hospital and the Rehmatul-lil-Alameen Cardiac Centre, where she inquired after patients.

The quiet centrepiece is screening for rheumatic heart disease, a condition that often announces itself too late. Screening teams will visit 29,845 factories and industrial establishments across the three starting districts, and some 54,000 children at workers’ welfare schools across Punjab will also be screened for heart conditions. Every unit is linked to a digital hub at the PESSI head office, so routes and field work can be monitored in real time.

Officials say the province’s 24 social security hospitals already provide treatment and medicines to more than 10 million workers and family members, backed by 250 PESSI medical outlets. By March 2027 the mobile programme is due to extend to Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Sahiwal, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Rawalpindi. Its real measure, though, will not be the launch ceremony. It will be whether the units keep arriving, on schedule, at the factory gate and the doorstep — week after week, in every season.