ISLAMABAD -The health expenditure has increased by 28.78 per cent over last year, which is an indicator that present government is making best efforts to provide better health facilities to general public. According to Pakistan Economic Survey 2013-14, the government is committed to increase the healthcoverage to cover the growing demand of increasing population. It said that a number of efforts are underway to provide health facilities, increase health expenditure to GDP by 2 per cent and meet the international target set under MDGs. It said the government is committed to achieve better health outcomes by taking care of issues.
through increased coordination of the provincial governments alongwith UN agencies and donor institutes.
It said that the promulgation of the 18th Constitutional
Amendment and the 7th National Finance Commission Award (NFC), the federal government has transmitted greater bulk of payment to the provinces.
It said the provinces with newly empowered status have allocated more funds to healthcare making it more responsive to the needs of population.
It said the child and maternal mortality rates have been declined but at comparatively lower rate than the other countries in the region. The government has taken various steps through initiating several vertical
programmes such as the National Maternal and Child Health Programme, the Cancer Treatment Programme and the Aids Control Programme.
Infant and Child mortality are important indicator of a country’s
Socio- Economic development and quality of life as well as population health status.
Child mortality rates are used for monitoring of a country’s progress towards millennium Development Goal 4 which aims to reduce under five child mortality rate at 52 per cent, infant mortality rate at 40 per cent, immunization of children at 90 per cent, proportion of children under five who suffered from Diarrhea is at 10 per cent and Lady health worker’s coverage at 100 per cent.
It said Lady Health Worker Programme is considered to be one of the most successful programme in health sector with a total of 100,000 LHWs by providing basic health facilities covering the area of 83 per cent of the total population.
The target is aimed to be achieved by 2015, for which joint efforts are being made at both federal and provincial level to achieve the MDG 4 target.
Maternal and Child Health Programme Mother and child health has been one of the priority areas of Public Health in Pakistan. This programme
has been launched by the government in order to improve Maternal and Neonatal Health services for all, particularly the poor and the disadvantaged at all levels of health care delivery system.
It aims to provide improved access to high quality Mother and
Child Health and Family Planning services, train 10,000 community midwives) comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (EMONC) services in 295 hospiies, basic EMONC services in
590 health facilities, and family planning services in all health outlets.
It said the achievements in the health sector during 2013-14 included establishment of seven Rural Health Centers (RHCs), 32 Basic HealthUnits(BHUs) and up gradation of 10 existing RHCs and 37 BHUs.
The manpower included the addition of 5000 new doctors, 500 dentists, 3150 Nurses and 4500 paramedics. Under the preventive programme, about eight million children were targeted to be immunized and 23 million packets of ORS were to be distributed during 2013-14.
Till date 4500 HIV positive cases have been reported to the National and Provincial AIDS Control Programmes. Incidence of TB in population hasdecreased from 580/100000 in 1990 to 348/100000 in 2013. With treatment success rate at 91 per cent, Pakistan has achieved MDG target.
It said the investment in health over years have seen improvement in health facilities and health care providers. By the year 2013, the number of public sector hospital has increased to 1096, more than 5527 basic health units (BHUs), 650 rural health centers (RHCs) and 5310 dispensaries.
These facilities together with 167759 doctors, 13716 dentists and
86183 nurses brings the current ratio of one doctor for 1099 persons,
13441 person per dentist and availability of one hospital bed for 1647 person and shows that number under each establishment is increasing.