Federal Minister for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Syed Mustafa Kamal launched the Care1166 Health Complaint Management System at the Federal Directorate of Immunization in Islamabad on Wednesday, introducing a centralised digital platform through which citizens can register health related grievances. Under the new arrangement, residents of Islamabad can lodge complaints about the Ministry of National Health Services and its attached departments and institutions through a single helpline number, 1166, instead of visiting different government offices. The ministry said the platform is meant to give citizens, particularly those living in remote areas, convenient access to the relevant authorities by telephone, so that their concerns are formally registered and addressed.
The system is built around automatic routing and monitoring. According to the ministry, complaints will be forwarded automatically to the concerned departments or designated officers, and their progress will be tracked from registration to resolution. A central dashboard has been set up to keep a record of every complaint, the officer to whom it has been assigned, and the action taken to resolve it. The health minister will be able to review complaints and their progress through the dashboard from his office, which gives him direct oversight of how the relevant departments perform. The platform is designed not only to take in complaints but also to ensure follow up and to show what practical steps authorities have taken, which addresses a common weakness of grievance systems where a complaint is recorded and then disappears without any visible outcome.
In its first phase, the system will handle complaints about government hospitals and dispensaries in Islamabad, and designated officers have been assigned at the respective hospitals to make sure that grievances are dealt with in time. The platform will keep a centralised and traceable record of hospital related complaints, so the Ministry of Health can monitor public grievances and service delivery across government healthcare facilities directly. The ministry added that analysis of the complaints received from citizens will help to identify health related issues and disease trends in different areas, which turns the complaint data into information that can guide decisions on where services need attention.
The launch follows two reviews held by the minister in recent weeks, when he assessed the performance of helpline 1166 on October 22 and the progress of the Health Complaint Management System on November 3, and called for timely redressal, better monitoring, and greater transparency in healthcare. The ministry said the initiative would particularly help women, low income families, and marginalized communities, who often find it hardest to bring their concerns to government authorities, by giving them an accessible channel to do so by phone. It also expects the system to improve transparency, raise institutional accountability, and give a clearer picture of public health service delivery through systematic monitoring of complaints and their resolution. Whether it delivers will depend on how quickly designated officers respond and how openly the dashboard data is used once the platform expands beyond the capital’s government hospitals and dispensaries.
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