PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has failed to absorb the erstwhile centre-funded health projects in the province into the local regular healthcare system in the post-devolution regime.

The last provincial government had planned that the health projects financed by the centre before decentralisation of the health subject would be made part of the regular programme through a restructuring plan.

However, the new government has shelved the plan, according to the relevant officials.

The officials said the idea was conceptualised by the former government after it thought that the federal government-run projects operated in the province didn’t bring any improvement in health delivery and instead they caused duplication of activities and waste of resources.

Govt had to absorb erstwhile centre-funded projects into regular health system

The officials said the plan meant to overhaul the health department was supposed to be executed by June 2012 but the plan remained far from implemented.

They said under the plan, the provincial government was to absorb health projects after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment as the federal government was not responsible for funding them after the devolution of health subject.

According to them, before the amendment, the federal government used to finance health programmes in the province.

However, all health facilities and programmes have not been transferred to the respective provinces.

The officials said the centre had pledged to finance health programmes until the next National Finance Commission Award after which the provinces were to absorb them into regular health system.

They said after devolution, it was an opportunity to restructure the health department by merging those projects with regular health system and avoid duplication of activities and waste of resources.

The officials said the government had done necessary work on the restructuring plan and even some countries had pledged donations for its execution.

They said the provincial government would struggle to absorb the employees of the erstwhile centre-funded health programmes in the province.

The officials said the government would require Rs50 million additional cost annually to run such programme after the federal government stopped funding but the people won’t benefit.

They said most of such health programmes worked on public awareness/treatment of HIV, TB, malaria, immunisation and mother and child problems but the issues too were tackled by the regular health system.

The officials said under the plan, the powers related to health system were to be devolved to the district level to speed up implementation of the government’s policies.

They said currently, the administrative affairs were totally centralised and for small decisions, the employees contacted the secretariat and health directorate, which caused delays in important mattes.

The officials said the plan had outlined that the secretariat would perform its original duty of implementing government policies through the health directorate and executive district officers to improve healthcare.

They said the plan also included relocation of the healthcare employees in line with their job description.

The officials said in the province, health facilities were either overstaffed or understaffed.

They said under the healthcare restructuring plan, incentives were to be offered to doctors and health personnel to improve health facilities and provide effective primary, secondary and tertiary care to the people.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2014