Formation of Council for religious leaders in last stage

AIDS patients registered at ARV Center in Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) are getting free medicines, while the formation of Council for religious leaders was in its last stage to involve Ulema in a campaign against the deadly disease.
Manager, AIDS Control Programme NWFP, Dr Mohammad Zafar stated this during a meeting on health projects running in the province here on Wednesday.
The meeting was also informed that provision of free hepatitis-C screening kits to the public sector hospitals would be started by the June this year.
Presiding over the meeting, NWFP Minister for Health Inayatullah Khan took strong exception over charging fee from blood-donors in the government run hospitals and asked concerned authorities to provide such facilities to the donors free of cost.
Ordering strict monitoring of blood banks to ensure safe blood transfusion, the health minister further asked the concerned authorities to chalk out plan for establishment of blood banks in districts, which were lacking the facilities.
Issuing directives for strengthening of immunisation activities to prevent childhood diseases effectively, the health minister disclosed that improvement of routine EPI would be the top most priority of the health department.
The meeting was briefed about the achievements made by National Programme for Family Planning and primary health care, TB Control Programme, women health project, AIDS Control Programme, malaria roll back and health sector reforms unit. Briefing the meeting, Provincial Co-ordinator, National Programme for Primary Health said that 13,000 lady health workers (LHWs) working under the project were striving integrate health services in 23 districts of the province.
He elaborated that 11.4 million population of the province was covered under the programme while performance of the project had increased by 14 percent during the last three years.
He said that due to effective measures, infant mortality rate (IMR) had decreased by 3 percent during the last three years while mothers mortality rate (MMR) has reduced from 338 to 195 per 1000 live births in the mentioned period.
Underlining importance of the primary health care programme, the minister urged the need of capacity building of LHWs to utilise their services in eradication of preventable diseases. He also asked for establishing links among various health programmes at BHU level to utilize both human and financial resources efficiently.
Similarly, the minister ordered 3rd party evaluation of the project to collect accurate statistics about infant as well as maternal mortality rate. Expressing concern over the poor performance of EPI, the health minister ordered steps to make it efficient. He directed for social mobilisation and focus on mosques and schools to make the programme effective.
He also ordered to take steps to provide vaccination facilities to the community and proper utilisation of services of paramedics, health technicians and health visitors in immunisation activities to prevent diseases effectively.
The minister on this occasion stressed the need of co-ordination among various projects to ensure prudent use of resources. He also directed for maintaining record to obtain accurate information and evaluate projects scientifically. He also directed DG Health to convene meeting of the co-ordination committee quarterly to ensure harmonisation among various projects.