PM Shehbaz Orders Nationwide Disease Screening Drive Across Pakistan

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday directed the Ministry of National Health Services to launch a nationwide disease screening initiative, aiming to identify and address undetected illnesses across Pakistan's population through a structured, government-led public health campaign.

The directive emerged from a high-level meeting chaired by the Prime Minister to review the health ministry's performance and forward agenda. Officials were instructed to operationalise the screening drive with urgency, targeting common and preventable conditions that frequently go undiagnosed in both urban and rural communities due to limited healthcare access.

The initiative is part of a broader government push to strengthen preventive healthcare infrastructure, reduce the burden of late-stage disease presentations in public hospitals, and improve health outcome metrics ahead of upcoming national planning cycles. Coordination with provincial health departments will be essential for implementation, given that healthcare is a devolved subject under the Eighteenth Amendment.

Health experts have long advocated for systematic screening programmes as a cost-effective public health intervention, particularly for conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, hepatitis, and tuberculosis — all of which carry high prevalence rates in Pakistan. The effectiveness of the drive will ultimately depend on resource allocation, training of frontline health workers, and institutional follow-through at the district level.