PESHAWAR, May 7: The federal government is unlikely to meet the Millennium Development Goals in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas owing to the poor pace of progress in the sector, an official said.
The official said the allocation of only 0.7 per cent of the GDP for health showed lack of commitment on the part of the government to achieve the Millennium Development Goals set forth by the UN and supposed to be met by 2015.
He said the government was required to bring down the infant mortality rate from the present 116 to 44 in a population of 1,000 and maternal mortality ratio from 600 per 100,000 live births to 140 in Fata.
“If compared to the rest of the country, the health indicators for Fata were poor,” he said, adding that the situation in the country with regard to infant mortality rate was 103 per 1000 live births and maternal mortality ratio 350 per 100,000 live births. Of the 3.6 million population, 8.8 per cent or 0.316 million accounted for children under the age of five years in Fata.
Governed directly by the federal government only 21 per cent or 0.76 million births were attended by trained birth attendants, which according to the Millennium Development Goals be brought to 90 per cent.
The official said that 97 per cent of the population lived in rural areas and the average household size ranged from 8.5 to 10.6 people.
The problem is aggravated by extreme shortage of medical staff.
Fata had a total of 66 specialist doctors, 435 medical officers, 48 female medical officers, 28 dental surgeons, 182 nurses, 280 lady health visitors, 453 medical technicians and 2,232 non-technical staff.
Seven tribal units had six agency headquarters hospitals, four tehsil headquarters hospitals, 16 D-type hospitals, eight rural health centres, 168 basic health units, 454 community health centres and 1,762 hospital beds for the entire population.
Causes of the deaths in children were pneumonia 19 per cent, diarrhoea 19 per cent, prenatal causes 08 per cent, measles 07 per cent, malaria 05 per cent and 32 per cent died of other causes.
Seven tribal agencies had 217 lady health visitors against the sanctioned posts of 243 and 926 lady health workers covered 26 per cent of the household. Fifty per cent of the areas happened to be inaccessible.
An official said that causes of the high infant mortality rate were high fertility rate, lack of appropriate prenatal care and SBAs, low level of female literacy and malnutrition in women of child-bearing age.
Lack of Emergency and Obstetric Neonatal Care Service has been hampering the government’s plan to reduce the neonatal mortality due to birth-related problems, low birth weight and neonatal tetanus.