July 10, 2006	Monday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 13, 1427

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PESHAWAR, July 9: Participants of a roundtable conference here have called for adequate health infrastructure accessible to people and for vesting more power to health administrators to enable them to improve the health delivery system at the grassroots level.

The policy roundtable held to collect suggestions from stakeholders for a framework for provincial health policy was held jointly by the health sector reform unit of the health department and the Pakistan Health Policy Forum at the health secretariat on Sunday.

Participants, including executive district officers (EDOs), health officials, medical experts and journalists, expressed concern over the setting up of health units in places which were not accessible to the people. They said that EDOs at the district level lacked power which also hampered the health delivery system in the province and recommended that financial as well as administrative power be vested in them so that they could take timely decisions.

They said that the government had ignored the primary healthcare system which was the backbone of the country’s health infrastructure. They said that there was neither any service structure for doctors nor was there any prescribed criteria for building basic health units and rural health centres.

About 80 per cent of peoples’ problems were related to health, which should be resolved by strengthening the basic health infrastructure.

They said that most of the doctors preferred to be posted in cities because of the non-availability of facilities in rural areas, adding that furthermore, doctors who were posted in rural areas had no experience of primary healthcare.

Politicians came under scathing criticism from the participants who, they said, intervened in health affairs. Besides, mismanagement on the part of health managers was another factor adversely affecting the health delivery system, they added.