Ministry of Health is executing currently a total of 82 development schemes with PSDP allocation of Rs 16.9 billion for FY2010-11, reveals the Economic Survey 2010-11. Against this allocation, Rs 7.411 billion has already been released by the Planning Commission during July-January, 2011.
Out of the released amount, Rs 6.3 billion has been utilised by the programmes/ projects up to January, 2011 which is 85 percent against the released amount. Despite financial constraints, the government has shown its resolve to continue investments in social sector to improve Human Development Index, the Survey adds.
The government's health budget has been progressively increasing over the last several years. The share of health expenditure in total expenditures/GDP is the most significant variable affecting health status in a country. Notwithstanding the increase in absolute terms its ratio to GNP/GDP remained more or less static at around 0.5-0.7 percent. The analysis of health financing of last decade 2000-10 indicates that major share of the financial resources in public sector are provided by the government.
With reference to the ratio between development and non-development budget, comparison of last several years shows a major dominance of non-development budget. The gap appears to have been widening over years partly due to resource constraints. However, the overall trend is comparatively favourable. For 2011, total health care expenditure is estimated at 0.23 percent of GDP, it said.
The Economic Survey said up to the year 2010, there are 144,901 physicians, 10508 dentists, 73,244 nurses, and 27.153 midwives. Besides, there are 972 hospitals Health and Nutrition 143 in the country with total of 104,137 hospital beds, 4,842 dispensaries and 5,344 basic health units (BHUs) mostly in rural areas. Special attention has been given to the training of nurses, and several training centers are in operation.
According to the available heath data, the population versus health facilities ratio works out 1,222 person per doctor and availability of one dentist for 16,854 people and one hospital bed for 1,701 people. Targets for the health sector during 2010-11 included establishment of 15 RHC, 40 BHUs and upgradation of 45 existing RHCs and 900 BHUs.
The manpower target included the addition of 5,000 new doctors, 450 dentists, 3,500 Nurses, 5,500 paramedics and 500 traditional birth attendants. Under the preventive programme, about 8.5 million children were targeted to be immunised and 25 million packets of ORS were to be distributed during 2010-11, said the Economic Survey.
It said that the National Aids Control Programme (NACP) has estimated that there are about 90,000-100,000 HIV positive people, approximately 0.1 percent of the general population. Pakistan ranks 8th amongst the countries with the highest burden of TB in the world. TB is responsible for 5.1 percent of the total national disease burden in Pakistan. Total number of TB cases reported are 62,321. Whereas the absolute number of cases is 209,714 up to the third quarter of 2010 and the treatment success rate remained 91 percent.
About the blindness, it said the programme is in line with "VISION 2020," the global initiative of the WHO for elimination of preventable causes of blindness by the year 2020.
The core objective of the programme to be achieved include prevention of blindness in two (02) million people, restoration of vision in two (02) million people and restoration of useful vision in 15,000 children. The Economic Survey 2010-11 said that the government allocated Rs 2,716.3 million (GoP Rs 2315.7) &GAVI Rs 400.6) for the current year 2010-11 to improve the health status of children and their mothers. Government has brought Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) support for introduction of pneumococcal vaccine for the country under co-financing mechanism.
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) will pay US $680 million and the country will bear 20 million dollars under GAVI Phase-2 support. It said that the number of Polio cases has been reduced from thousands to just 140 cases in 2010.
In 2010 (January-December) the total number of confirmed malaria cases in Pakistan reported from all the districts were 2,20,870 including 143,136 or 75 percent cases due to P. fvivax infection and 73857 due to P falciparum infection and 3,877 were mixed infection. The currently approved PC-I for 2007-2012 are a step towards achieving the WHO global RBM target of 50 percent reduction in the malaria burden by the year 2010 in Pakistan, it said.
It informed that Pakistan is a signatory of many international development strategies, including MDGs and the government is committed to achieve a reduction in Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) by 2015. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) has so far established 14 cancer hospitals in various cities throughout the country. Presently, there are 2,000 professionals and supportive staff working at these hospitals. Nuclear Medicine and Oncology Hospitals besides treating about 286,000 patients in the period under report, the following targets have also been achieved.
The Economic Survey reports that a new Drug Control master Plan (2010-14) has been prepared to reduce the health, social and economic costs associated with drug trafficking and substance abuse in Pakistan. The plan includes short, medium and long-term initiatives for implementation of the National Anti-Narcotics Policy-2010.
Currently, there are 19 on-going development projects which are being implemented at total cost of Rs 5321.590 million including local cost Rs 2,712.4 million and foreign aid of Rs 2,609.2 million. According to the available data, about 38 percent of children less than five years of age are underweight and 12 percent are severely under weight, reflective of wide spread malnutrition among women during adolescence.
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