ISLAMABAD: The World Health Organisation has commenced dialogue with the Pakistan government in order to strengthen the emergency healthcare system in the country at both national and provincial levels.

The dialogue is the part of a broader WHO regional initiative to strengthen emergency care systems in the countries of Eastern Mediterranean region which covers Pakistan.

According to WHO, the initiative has already been implemented in Egypt, Iran, Libya and Tunisia. The EMRO region covers 23 countries, including Pakistan.

WHO says that emergency care is an essential part of the health system and serves as the first point of contact for many around the world. Pre-hospital and facility-based emergency care is a high-impact and cost-effective form of secondary prevention. Additionally, disease surveillance at facilities delivering emergency care is essential to guide primary prevention and outbreak response.

Recently, a national meeting took place in Islamabad on developing consensus-based action priorities based on the results of the WHO Emergency Care System Assessment convened by the Ministry of Health Services, Regulation and Coordination

in collaboration with WHO Pakistan and the regional office for the Eastern Mediterranean. Participants included emergency care system professionals and stakeholders from Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balo­chistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Ministry of National Health Services Secretary Dr Sabeen Afzal informed the meeting that there was a dire need to streamline the policies and protocols related to the emergency care system. While service delivery was the mandate of provinces, a nationwide emergency medical care system needed to be established, she added.

The meeting reviewed the ‘WHO Emergency Care System Assessment’ results prepared by national experts and stakeholders from participating provinces.

Based on these results, the meeting also aimed to build consensus on action priorities to address identified gaps in areas like system organisation and governance; finance; emergency care data; quality improvement; scene care; transport and transfer; facility-based emergency care; rehabilitation for emergency conditions; and emergency preparedness.

The action priorities serve as the basis for an implementation plan that would inform policy-makers, health system administrators, health care providers and other stakeholders in their efforts to strengthen the emergency care system in the country.

WHO is working with countries to respond to crises and emergencies by ensuring effective, efficient and timely action to address public health priorities so that lives are saved and suffering is reduced; and to recover from crises by ensuring the local health system is back to functioning.

WHO’s new health emergencies programme changes the way the organisation does business, expanding from being primarily a technical and normative organisation to a fully operational agency in emergencies. In the WHO programme budget for 2016-2017, an allocation of $334 million has been made for the new health emergencies programme.

The start-up costs and additional core, recurring costs for the new programme will require an additional $160 million during the 2016-17 biennium ($100 million in 2017) and $150 million per year in 2018 and 2019.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2017