ISLAMABAD: Japan has extended a grant assistance of $31.4 million to Pakistan for the extension of maternal and child healthcare facilities in Sindh, and $2.9m for human resource development scholarships.

Notes to this effect were signed and exchanged between Ambassador of Japan Matsuda Kuninori and additional secretary of Economic Affairs Division Zulfiqar Haider in Islamabad on Tuesday.

Subsequently, a grant agreement was signed and exchanged between chief representative of JICA Pakistan Furuta Shigeki and joint secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs Syeda Adeea Bokhari.

Under the project, a new maternal and child health centre will be established at the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, which is a public medical institution serving as the regional hub hospital in Hyderabad district.

The maternal and child health centre will have the departments of obstetrics and paediatrics, including a labour room, an obstetrics ward, a neonatal intensive care unit, a maternal and foetal intensive care unit, a laboratory and outpatient consultation rooms. In addition, around 120 items of medical equipment, including newborn incubators and ultrasonic diagnostic device, are to be installed.

The project is scheduled to be completed by August 2024. With the opening of the centre, access to maternal and child health services in the area will be substantially improved.

For example, three years after completion, the maternal and foetal intensive care unit will have nearly 100 patients and the neonatal intensive care unit will have more than 400 patients annually. In addition, the annual number of deliveries and outpatients will also increase significantly. As a result, local patients will not have to travel a long distance to Karachi.

For decades, Japan has put a priority on the health sector in the economic and social development of Pakistan, such as enhancement of maternal and child health, polio eradication, routine immunisation and counter-Covid-19 measures.

In the last decade prior to the project in Jamshoro, Japan has implemented projects in maternal and child health in Karachi and Islamabad.

These include the extension of intensive care at the Maternal and Child Health Care Centre and Children’s Hospital in Pak­­istan Institute of Medical Sciences, and improvement of Child Health Institute in Karachi.

As far as Covid-19 is concerned, Japan has extended a total of $23.5m in grant to Pakistan for supplementing its counter-Covid-19 measures.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2021