PESHAWAR, April 7: NWFP Health Minister Inayatullah Khan on Saturday called upon professionals to adopt an integrated and multi-sector approach to deal with challenges in the health sector.

Speaking at an inaugural session of the sixth Biennial Conference of Nephrology, he said that research should be carried out and strategies developed to overcome ailments.

The three-day event was organised by the Pakistan Society of Nephrology (PSN). The patron-in-chief of PSN, Prof S.A. Jaffery Naqvi and PSN president Prof Akhtar Ali also addressed the audience.

The minister said that due to ignorance and extreme poverty, communicable and non-communicable diseases were increasing in the developing world. Complex financing mechanisms, expensive technology and costly medicines were the causes of a poor health delivery system, he said. “Unfortunately policies were not formulated on scientific lines which are multiplying the problems,” he added.

Mr Khan regretted that experts dealing with the finances were conservative in their approach and did not stress on health and education enough. “There is a dire need to convince them to spend more on health and education as investment in its true sense,” he said, adding that a sustainable alternative to the present tax-based financial system had also been prepared. “In this regard the social health insurance system would be initiated for the public sector employees by June this year.”

He informed the participants that nephrology departments would be set up at all district hospitals in the province and said that a kidney centre at the Hayatabad Medical Complex was in its final stages and would be made functional soon.

Prof Naqvi said that about Rs288 million was needed to look after about 100 million patients suffering from chronic kidney diseases. He said that 20 per cent of the country’s population was currently suffering from diabetes, while 18 per cent had hypertension. “Sixty per cent patients with both these conditions are developing end-stage kidney diseases,” he said.