Health project may end due to delays

Official sources in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) health department fear the collaboration with the Bill Gates Foundation on the establishment of health units may come to an end due to unexpected delays.

The Local Government (LG) Department has not been able to identify sites and issue a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) for the project.

The Bill Gates Foundation had offered to fund construction of 15 health centres for the K-P Health Department, targeting 55 high-risk areas for polio, sources told The Express Tribune.

Although the Local Government Department has identified four potential sites for the centres, it has yet to issue the necessary notifications for land procurement and the NOC for the project.

If the land is not provided to the Gates Foundation until March, the project will likely be terminated and further funding from the foundation stopped, which would be a blow to K-P's efforts to overcome the increasing number of polio cases in the province.

The sources further stated that, under the project, new buildings for polio vaccinations and immunizations as well as health centres would be constructed on these sites.

As part of the agreement, the foundation will build solarized health centres once the land is provided by the provincial government for the purpose.

The Bill Gates Foundation has been instrumental in the set-up of 15 health centres in rented buildings across Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Tank, and North and South Waziristan since 2020.

As per the agreement, they will continue to cover expenses of these health centres until December, 2025.

According to the sources, prior to the establishment of the health centres, the coverage provided by the anti-polio campaign in high-risk union councils had only been 49 per cent which, following the creation of the 15 health centres, had risen to 80 per cent.

Health Secretary Adeel Shah has confirmed that a request had been made to the Local Government Department to provide sites and an NOC for the Basic Health Units (BHUs), and they were working diligently to complete the project as soon as possible.

It may be mentioned here that the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had agreed to collaborate on enhancing Pakistan's climate resilience.

The agreement had been forged during a high-level Climate Adaptation Roundtable hosted by Romina Khurshid Alam, the Prime Minister's Coordinator for Climate Change, in June last year.

The roundtable had been convened at the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) headquarters and been co-hosted by NDMA Chairperson Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik.

During the event, Romina Khurshid Alam had briefed Bill Gates on the diverse impacts of climate change across sectors in Pakistan and highlighted how the country's socio-economic gains were increasingly vulnerable to climate-related challenges.