New K-P mechanism to identify needs of BHUs

New programme will provide real-time data with regard to Basic Health Units

PESHAWAR: In view of absence of a system to identify needs of the Basic Health Units (BHU) under the local government system, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has adopted a new strategy by launching an equity-based mechanism to know quantum of needs at primary health facilities and to fill these gaps.

The strategy has been adopted at six BHUs initially. The K-P health ministry has also obtained data of 96 BHUs, 13 rural health centres (RHC) and seven hospitals from three districts.

Health department officials said after devolution of the BHUs under the local government, the Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOs) were provided the health budget and the DDO distributed the amount among BHUs without maintaining any record.

They said Sub-National Governance (SNG) programme carried out a rapid public expenditure tracking exercise for primary health and concluded that current system for allocating resources to primary health facilities lacked equitable distribution of resources including medicines and human resource.



“Resources for all the BHUs in a district were clubbed under a single DDO resulting in a lack of transparency and accountability for expenditures which led to uninformed and non-inclusive decision making, confining capability of the government to deliver basic services,” an official document read.

A senior official, , who requested not to be named, said the need for all this exercise was felt after the department came to know that the DDOs were distributing funds, medicines and other things according to their own will.

He said the DDOs were found to be involved in nepotism as they distributed funds without any criteria. Sometimes they even delayed funds for some BHUs.

“We came to know that the medicines provided to the OPD section ended in less than a week time and above all, we were shocked to discover that the day medicines reached the BHUs, a huge number of patients would visit the facility and stock of medicines ended after six or seven days,” he said.

The official said in view of this irregularity government felt the need to introduce a better system. Therefore, the government sent recommendations to health and the finance departments and the latter approved the programme for a fast track implementation, he said.

“The goal of the new programme is to identify the gaps and prepare for the next fiscal years’ budget,” he said, adding that “Implementation of the programme will reduce political interference as well.”

The programme will now also provide real-time data, which has been absent until now.

“Till now a request for information – specifically related to resource allocation under the Right to Information Act (RTI) – could not be answered satisfactorily because of the absence of the data. However, under the current system anyone seeking information can be better entertained,” he said.

The officials, who have spent 6 months in developing the mechanism, believe that once fully functional the same can be replicated in other departments as well, particularly in police and education department.

“The first phase is to implement the system and gather data under the economic tracking system to know how many resources are available within the health care system. The second phase comprises filling the gaps within the system,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2016.