PESHAWAR, Aug 5: A delegation comprising representatives of donor agencies is arriving here on August 10 to discuss the implementation of a health surveillance system in the province.

The team, which will include representatives of the WHO and USAID, with hold meetings with the provincial health secretary and the director-general health services. Officials here said the donor agencies in the past had expressed reservations over the non-existence of a health surveillance system in the province.

They said the donors had also shown displeasure over the manner in which data relating to various diseases was collected and asked the government to improve the data collection system so that preventive measures for various ailments could be put in place.

"In the past, representatives of these agencies have urged the health department to build the capacity of the district health management teams," the officials said.

According to them, the donors in the past pointed out that the absence of a supervisory mechanism at the district level was hampering their efforts to improve the health delivery network.

Lack of sharing of information between line departments had also been a cause of concern for the donor agencies which asked the health department to develop a coordinative mechanism among different projects and departments.

The officials said that apart from the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), reports prepared under other programmes of the health department, such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, the women health project were often fake and did not reflect the true picture.

"Most of the reports are fake as these are prepared by officials at the basic health units, dispensaries and DHQ hospitals under the pressure of the director-general health," an official said.

Such data, collected on the monthly basis and sent to Islamabad, was useless as far as research was concerned, the official said. Other officials said that a health management information system (HMIS) was established in 1993 with the financial help of the USAID with a view to collecting data of about 18 priority diseases with special focus on EPI and mother and child health care.

But the HMIS became a total failure owing to the shortage of staff and lack of facilities required for collecting data, the officials said. An official claimed that no proper data was available in the Frontier which could be utilized in the formulation of a health policy. Likewise, there is no mechanism available to meet any emergency-like situation.

A senior official said the visit of the representatives of donor agencies would provide an opportunity to the health department to utilize their experiences and resources for the establishment of a proper health surveillance system in the province.