Participants at a consultative seminar have highlighted the bottlenecks in achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, relating to maternal health issues, under the global commitments. They have called the active participation of government, all relevant stakeholders and other indicators, to remove the financial and legislative implications for meeting the SDGs.
The consultative meeting with CSOs and Media Representatives on SDGs held under auspices of Rahnuma-Family Planning Association of Pakistan (FPAP) at its regional office, here on Wednesday. Rahnuma-FPAP Regional Director, Gohar Zaman briefed the participants about the overall activities of the organisation and efforts for highlighting the SRHR of young mothers at every fora.
Besides, Dr Saeed Gul from provincial Health department, and representative of UNFPA Lubna Tajak, representatives of civil society organisations, government departments, members from Non-governmental organisations, and media persons from print and electronic media attended the consultative session.
The participants stressed the need for better co-ordination and collective efforts of government departments, relevant stakeholders with involvement of civil society, religious scholars, and other key players, to meet the goals for provision of better maternal health issues under the international commitments under the SDGs. They further suggested the creation of parliamentary caucus, enhancement of budgetary allocations, specifically resolution of maternal health issues, and political parties should also include the health issues top in their manifesto and agenda.
Earlier, the Rahnuma-FPAP, Regional Director Gohar Zaman in his detail presentation said that the SDGs is specifically relating to improvement of maternal health issues. He highlighted the basic facilities to maternal healthcare and mothers, unmet needs is around 33 to 40 percent at district headquarter according to previous data, while mortality ratio of infants and mothers is about 63 percent.