Fourteen UN agencies operating in Pakistan have planned and developed a joint programme to address the needs for improving health and population issues in Pakistan with an estimated cost of $384.7 million.
Federal Secretary Ministry of Health, Suleman Ghani, Federal Secretary Ministry of PopulationWelfare, Nayyar Agha, the Co-Chairs of the Health and Population Joint Programme, Dr Khalife Bile, representative WHO, Luc Chauvin, Officer-in-Charge, UNICEF, signed the United Nation Pakistan's Joint Programme Document in the presence of the Federal Secretary, Farukkh Qayyum and the heads of the UN agencies here on Thursday.
Fourteen UN agencies operating in Pakistan including FAO, ILO, IOM, The World Bank, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNIFEM, UNODC, WFP and WHO, Co-Chaired by WHO and UNICEF. The programme is planned for activities till 2010.
After the signing ceremony both the secretaries said that they felt confident that after the implementation of the joint programme the government and people of Pakistan will benefit from improved health systems and facilities and address the population issues towards development.
The vision of the Health and Population Joint Programme is based on the 'Health for All' approach, through five well-targeted components which will be treated in a holistic manner to ensure linkages and common concerns are well articulated.
The joint programme will be implemented over a period of two years with emphasis on initiatives that will address the priority areas of the Government of Pakistan. The overall objective is to improve the health policy, planning and regulation leading to a more equitable, responsive and fair financing of a decentralised health system.
The main areas of intervention are; MNCH and FP/RH in the context of PHC, Communicable Disease Control, Nutrition, Health Promotion, Health Systems Development, HIV and AIDS and Population Census.
This One Programme builds upon, and stems from the reviewed and extended UN Development Framework. It identifies key areas of support, expected outcomes and outputs that all UN entities shall jointly aim for to ensure that the UN contributes to the development goals of Pakistan in line with the established national priorities, MDGs, and relevant international norms and conventions.
The UN support to Pakistan was regrouped around five thematic areas and four cross-cutting issues. These thematic areas are: Health and Population; Education; Disaster Risk Management; Environment; and Agriculture, Rural Development and Poverty Reduction. The four cross-cutting themes are: civil society participation, gender, refugees, and rights approach to development (details in annex3).
Programmes jointly planned and jointly implemented, not just stapled together, stemming from the outcomes of the UNDAF, will come together as Joint Programmes falling under the identified thematic areas ensuring that the cross-cutting issues are well addressed.-PR
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