WHO to assist Pakistan in improving health system performance

Initiative to be launched in 2013; govt urged to improve data monitoring.

ISLAMABAD:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified Pakistan as one of the six countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region where the Commission on Information and Accountability (COIA) initiative will be launched in 2013.

The commission aims to assist countries in improving the availability and quality of data needed to monitor performance of the health system, particularly for the maternal, new born and child health, in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 by 2015.

WHO has asked Pakistan to develop consensus over provincial and national plans of action to implement COIA’s recommendations.

In this regard, a three-day national workshop to establish groundwork for the initiative was launched at a local hotel here on Thursday. Representatives of WHO and federal and provincial governments participated in the workshop.



Representatives of the provincial government shared information about their respective provinces and where they stand in terms of meeting MDGs 4 and 5.

It is unfortunate that all the data on health required by national and international organisations is either entirely or partially unavailable, said WHO Country Representative Dr Guido Sabatinelli.

Moreover, the available data is fragmented or of poor quality, he said.

Sabatinelli said multiple data sources are required to meet the needs of such national information systems. These include records of births, deaths and causes of death; censuses and surveys; individual medical and service records and finance and resource tracking information systems, he said.

The WHO official said that the recent devolution of the Ministry of Health under the 18th Constitutional Amendment has made things more complex as the provincial governments are now expected to define and find ways to meet their health and information needs.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2012.