ISLAMABAD - The Health Ministry is gearing up efforts to finalise the new National Health Policy as it plans to announce the policy by end of September. The work on formulating a new health policy started in April, soon after the new government took charge. The initiative was taken when in charge Health Minister Sherry Rehman, while taking notice of a number of flaws in the previous health policy, vowed to come up with a new one. After announcing to formulate a new health policy, a task force was established which further constituted six working groups to speed up the process. Each group has been assigned a different subject to work on. Subjects that were given to the sub-groups include hospital management, health services in governance, health financing, medical education and human resource development, medical ethics and pharmaceutics. A few of the working groups held their meetings with the officials of the ministry but, so far, they have not presented their proposals. So far, the working groups of national health services in governance, health financing, medical educational, human resource development and one of medical ethics have successfully come up with their final recommendations but not a single group has come up with their inputs. On the other hand, the Ministry is trying to give final touches to the policy as soon as possible. After taking charge, the in-charge Health Minster, Sherry Rehman, directed the officials concerned to start formulating a new health policy keeping in mind the ground realities and need of the public. Health polices were announced twice before, in 1997 and 2001, by successive governments. Every time a new government assumes charge, it tries to come up with its own new health policy that reflects its party agenda and vision. But need of the time is to come up with a policy that addresses the masses' basic health problems and cover all the relevant health issues.