Use of mobile tech can improve healthcare in merged areas: seminar

PESHAWAR: The merged areas of the province have the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the country, and digital technology can help reduce these mortality rates.

A virtual policy seminar titled “What Does It Take to Extend Quality Service Delivery to Remote Areas in a Low Resource Environment?” was informed that maternal mortality rate is 395 deaths per 100,000 births and infant mortality rate is 86 per 1,000 live births in the merged districts of KP.

Experts suggested that digital innovations in the health sector such as the use of mobile phones and sending out targeted messages for expectant and new parents can lead to improved maternal and infant mortality rate in the merged areas.

The event was organised by Merged Areas Governance Project (MAGP) of the United Nations Development Program on Thursday.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa General Health Services Director Dr Niaz Muhammad, Advisor to the Government of Pakistan Dr Ghazna Khalid, and Dr Zlatko Nikoloski, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at London School of Economics (LSE) Department of Health Policy, explored the challenges related to access to maternal healthcare.

The speakers said that since the impact of the global pandemic in early 2020, the country has realised the importance of universal healthcare coverage and prioritised the health sector. This is true for the former Fata region that was merged with KP in 2018, where the government of KP has ranked health a high priority sector and allocated substantive annual funds.

Despite a major increase in the health budget and reforms across the board in the health care system in the region, there continues to be low uptake of healthcare utilization, leading to poor health outcomes, especially for maternal and neonatal indicators.

Dr Nikoloski said the literature on the use of mobile phones in improving maternal health could be divided into two major parts.