PESHAWAR, May 8: Participants at a workshop here on Sunday said Unicef was supporting the government in many areas of healthcare, especially in obstetric emergency care services. Dr Abdul Jamil of Unicef, in his paper titiled ’EmOC (Emergency Obstetric Care) — Need Assessment Survey 2004’, said that the UN Children’s Fund had been supporting initiatives aimed at improving safe motherhood, breastfeeding, expanded programme on immunization (EPI), HIV/Aids and child development.

The workshop was organized by the Abaseen Foundation and Unicef.

It was addressed, besides others, by provincial Information Minister Asif Iqbal Daudzai and Secretary of Health Abdus Samad.

Dr Jamil said that due to lack of health facilities, most of the deliveries were handled by untrained attendants.

“We need improved services to deal with obstetric emergencies round the clock,” he said, adding that handing over of the Nahaqi Rural Health Centre (RHC) to Abaseen Foundation under the public-private partnership programme in 2000 had shown excellent results, and Unicef was willing to extend technical and financial support to such projects.

Chief Executive Officer of the Abaseen Foundation Dr Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi said they had taken over the Nahaqi RHC with a mission to serve 140,000 people of the area.

“We improved facilities and are giving incentives to the staff. These measures improved the services being offered to patients,” he added.

He said there was still a need to convince the people to visit hospitals before the situation got critical. The hospital, he added, required more funds to launch a 24-hour emergency service.

Dr Mohammad Rafiq, head of Health Sector Reforms and Research Unit (HSRRU), said that a survey conducted in the Nahaqi area had shown that 59 per cent of women delivered babies at home.

Birth attendants needed to be trained to be able to sense the seriousness of a case and refer it to hospital. In some cases women needed to undergo an operation or required transfusions along with some other specialized care, which could only be provided in a hospital.

He said only 12 per cent of expectant mothers were in a position to decide for themselves whether to go to hospital or not while 88 per cent of them did not have a say in this matter.

He said that in 46 per cent of cases no visit was made to hospital for post-natal checkups.

About seven per cent of women of the 594 interviewed during the survey said they had had 12 pregnancies, he added.

About 80 per cent of the patients visited private health facilities in the area, Dr Rafiq added.

Secretary of health Abdus Samad said the government feared that the funds allocated to the health and education sector in the provincial budget were either misused or not fully utilized.

He said that the government had been giving top priority to strengthen public-private partnership in improving healthcare services.

Information Minister Asif Iqbal Daudzai said the government had been trying its best to raise awareness of the people about diseases and their prevention.

He said a campaign be launched to educate women on the importance of visiting hospitals during and after pregnancies.

The minister said the government had been upgrading hospitals in district headquarters.