PESHAWAR, Oct 17: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is going to integrate four health projects into regular programmes of the health department with the financial and technical assistance of UK and Australia governments, according to officials.

They said that Department for International Development UK (DFID) and Australian Agency for International Development (AusAid) pledged 40 million pound and $40 million respectively to help in restructuring of provincial health department to strengthen regular health programmes instead of projects.

An official said that donor organisations had been given briefing on the restructuring plan of the health department. The plan primarily seeks to do away with duplication of activities owing to which government finds it hard to evaluate performance of officials and fix responsibility.

“The services of 13,000 lady health workers have been transferred from federal government to the province to improve vaccination and mother and child health at the hospitals,” the official said.

He said that the grant to be provided by DFID and AusAid was meant to provide free diagnostic kits, medical equipment, such as ultrasound and MRI scanners, X-ray plants and dental units etc to health department.

The projects to be converted into permanent programmes included Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Nutrition, Lady Health Workers Programme and Maternal and Neonatal Child Health (MNCH), he said.  Those programmes were financed by the federal government through ministry of health in the past, he said.

The official said that after the passage of 18th Amendment, the subject of health became domain of the province. The federal government will provide Rs10 billion every year to bear the cost of these programmes till 2015 after which these will be run by the provincial health department.

A three-year PC-1 costing about Rs8 billion has been prepared by the health department for the integration of these projects into regular programmes. After three-years, the output of the integration will be evaluated to remove weaknesses when the province will be required to provide additional budget.

The provincial government decided to restructure health department to improve services after getting federal programmes, the official said.

“The health department has 60,000 staffers, who consume more than half of the Rs10 billion budget in salaries and pensions while the health delivery services aren’t showing any sign of improvement,” the official said.

He said that under the restructuring programme, they would accommodate those employees, who were paid by the federal government before passage of 18th Amendment. “We are integrating these programmes in a way that every employee will have a clear job description,” he said.

In the second phase, plan had been drawn to make other such programmes including HIV/Aids Control Programme, Malaria Rollback Programme and TB Control Programme part of the regular structure, he said.

“Devolution has provided us with an opportunity to carry out reforms and improve patients care at government hospitals, especially primary health facilities,” the official said.

He said that a strategy was put in place to absorb employees of those projects and at the same time rationalise their services and ensure maximum health delivery packages for patients. The restructuring plan was aimed at bringing all departments under one roof as it would improve performance and cut down administrative cost, he said.

“We need to have an exit strategy after three years when funds coming from the centre will stop,” the official said.