Well Done Provincial Governments-Health Departments

The Punjab Government has issued the notification about regularization of 48000 Lady Health workers, 1947 Lady Health Supervisors, the Khyber Pakhtoon Khaw has announced to additionally recruitment of 3600 Lady Health Workers, 111 lady Health Supervisors, 272 Community Midwives, 500 vaccinators and 294 technical officers and the Balochistan has regularized 6720 Lady Health Workers. The trend shows that the Government is hardly working towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal 04 and 05 to reduce the child, infant and maternal mortality and improves the health status in Pakistan. At this point one thing need to be remember that civil society, UN agencies, NGOs and INGOs, Media and the academia played vital role to sensitize the provincial governments that the Millennium Development goal 4 & 5 could not be reached without acknowledging the services of health workers and strengthen them to secure their services and monitory benefits.

With this great initiative of provincial governments, still there is a lot of work to do to deal with the issue of child, infant and maternal mortality, here are some figures strengthen the narration to “a lot of work to do” i.e. in 1990 under 5 mortality rate was 138 while in 2012 it comes to 86 per 1000 live births, in 1990 newborn mortality was 56 and 2012 comes to 42 while the MDG 4 states that it should be reduced to 2 third.

The Lady Health Worker program first introduced in Pakistan in 1994 with the objective to reach out the masses of the community of Pakistan to improve the situation of primary health care at their door step particularly in rural area and urban slums of the country and address the unmet needs in the health sector. After 20 years the researches shows that the Lady Health Workers made significant work and helped in reduction of infant, child and maternal mortality but it is clear that still we have 40 % area is uncovered in Pakistan which is huge barrier in achieving MDG 4 & 5. Additionally, the lack of equipment, delays in disbursements of monitory benefits, shortage of medicines are also remains the challenge.

Although, the provincial governments are keenly observing the situations which is remarkable but there are some steps which needs to be taken first, increase the number of LHW and CMW which is crucial to access to the 100 % of community in the country, allocation of budget for the health worker program and increase the expenditure on health at least the WHO minimum US $ 60 per capita to pay for the training, equipping and support of health workers and the civil society, media and community networks should support and facilitate the health workers in their areas as these are our front line soldiers to achieve the MDG 4 & 5.