‘Pakistan off track in achieving health MDGs’

LAHORE
Pakistan is off track in achieving MDGs of mother and child health, mainly because people are reluctant in demanding health as right and quality service delivery and holding responsible to account.
These views were expressed by senior TV anchor Syed Talat Hussain, while addressing a district-based consultation session held in a local hotel in Sahiwal on Monday. A large number of people hailing from different walks of life participated in this session. EDO health, district administration, chairman and president of Sahiwal Press Club also addressed the session.
This consultation session was organised by Centre for Communication Programmes, Pakistan (CCPP) under a four years project named Empowerment, Voice and Accountability for Better Health and Nutrition (EVA BHN). CCPP planned to carry out similar sessions in 12 districts of two provinces Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for eliciting people voices on mother, child health and nutrition issues of their respective districts and bringing attention of policy makers for making improvement in service delivery of basic health care.
Highlighting the key issues, speakers said that Pakistan was off track in achieving MDGs related to mother and child health. Besides other reasons, people were reluctant in demanding health as right and quality service delivery and holding responsible to account. There were also less options available to people for raising their collective voices on issues such as health consequently health indicators were not improving at the required pace due to low participation of people.
The participants raised the issues like unavailability of qualified doctors at health facilities, incompetency of health providers, poor infrastructure, unavailability of medicines and other necessary services related to mother and child health. Some of them also talked about issues of accountability of inefficient bureaucracy and political representatives. There was a universal demand of more allocation of funds for health sector and across the board accountability of the responsible for failure of health department.
helpline: Punjab Minister for Women Development Hameeda Waheeduddin has said the protection of rights of women is the responsibility of the state and the government is paying due attention in this regard. She was talking to a delegation of women at her office on Monday. The minister said there was a need for socio-economic empowerment of women as no society could progress where the right and role of women were ignored. She said that in view of this fact, a separate department had been set up in Punjab for the protection of rights of women and it was playing an active role in this regard.
Referring to the Women Package 2014, she said that amendments were being made in the law for curbing violence against women, incidents of acid throwing and harassment.
She said the Women Empowerment Department had set up a free helpline where women could lodge their complaints. Similarly, she said the job quota for women in government departments had been increased from five percent to 15 percent. She said the Rozgar Bank was also being set up in Punjab and women would be given 30 percent quota.
She said thae daycare centres and working women hostels were being set up in all the districts of the province. Hameeda Waheeduddin further said that huge funds had been allocated for the welfare of women as well as providing them loans. She said the government was making all-out efforts for upholding the rights of women, so they could play their due role in national development.