ISLAMABAD, April 8: The ministry of health has sought Rs500 million additional funding to prepare a long term national health policy and to identify future areas of investment.

Official sources said here on Saturday that the ministry of health has submitted a revised National Health and Information Resource Centre (NHIRC) programme for approval by the Planning Commission to firm up short and long term health policies at the federal, provincial and district levels.

The programme aims at facilitating health managers to work out major policy indicators and help them compare inter-district and inter-provincial performances complied over a period of time.

The objective is to respond to the information needs of various decision making levels of the health care delivery system and to establish disease patterns through an integrated disease surveillance system.

The ministry of health informed the Planning Commission that it wanted to establish and strengthen the NHIRC, which was a dynamic unit with distinct features to interact with provincial health departments and other segments of health care delivery system.

The ministry said that it believed the key challenge would be to ensure the effective implementation of public health programmes in devolving work and coordinating across three levels of governments.

"The progress is encouraging but movement has been slow to build district capacity to manage health care in a devolved environment,” the ministry said, adding that the major test would be to ensure that local governments were giving priority to cost-effective services. Devolution can be conducive to programme implementation in public health through increased local accountability and improved management.

"However, the risks are that the districts lack capacity in planning, financial and human resource management,” the ministry said.

It said that in view of its vast infrastructure that was spread all over the country there had been a demand to establish an efficient information system that responds to the various decision making levels of the health care delivery system.

The health ministry conceded that the health information system had been grossly inadequate.

The routine facility based reporting system was poorly functioning and the indicators used did not correspond to information needs of decision makers; data collection did not take into account the technical skills of health personnel, it added.

"With this huge health infrastructure both in terms of various types of the health facilities, a heterogeneity of health system, there was a need to have an efficient and dynamic national centre capable of responding to the information needs of various decision making levels of the health care delivery system within the ministry of health and provincial health department,” the health ministry told the commission.