ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: The health policy of the previous military government lacked focus on family health and unless all the aspects of this important element were covered, the maternal and infant mortality rates would go on increasing, said Health Secretary Ejaz Rahim here on Tuesday.

He was speaking at a workshop on “Newborn Care in Pakistan: a Situational Analysis and Implications for Pakistan” arranged by Save the Children.

The secretary health said the present health policy in fact reflected the socio-economic and political injustices and it was need of the hour to improve the policy through different interventions to reduce poverty. The strategy so devised should come in the form of political commitments, while the maternal and infant mortality rates should be the central tool to identify the problems in the health policy, he emphasized.

Mr Rahim said the health challenges required vision to start intervention at household level to bring about a qualitative change. Lady Health Workers (LHWs) intervention is a holistic cadre working in rural population and could help in understanding the problems, he said, adding that these health workers were contributing as an agent for behavioural change. Still there was need for strengthening of the LHWs programme, he said.

Dr Zulfikar A Bhutta, a well-known paediatrician, said though the overall health of children had improved around the world, the mortality rate of new-born babies less than one-month-old hardly had changed, rather in some countries it had even increased.

The world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 had agreed to reduce the deaths of children less than five years old by two-thirds before 2015, he recalled.

According to the child health experts, this goal was unattainable without reducing newborn deaths by at least half, as these deaths now comprises 40 per cent of all child deaths, he said.

Dr Anne Tinker, deliberated upon the integration maternal and newborn care, global experience and said four commitments were the corner stones of these policies like political commitment, integrated focus on mothers and newborn, increased resources and effective implementation.