PESHAWAR, April 24: The World Bank has released Rs7.5 million for the community health financing scheme based on public-private partnership, especially for the vulnerable groups like women and children, participants of a seminar were told here.

Speakers at the seminar entitled “Health care financing,” organized by Aims International, a British NGO, and Abaseen Institute of Medical Sciences, stressed the need for public-private partnership for the improvement of community health.

Aims International in collaboration with the institute will execute this scheme initially in a small community. The World Bank will fund the scheme in Pishtakhara and Rustam, Mardan, to provide primary health care to the community, especially women and children.

“In community health financing scheme, the members voluntarily share the cost of treatment,” Aims International Director Peter Gasgrow said.

Provincial Health Minister Inayatullah Khan said the government would closely monitor the scheme and replicate it in the entire province.

He said the government would make efforts to invest Zakat fund in the same manner and encourage the involvement of the well-off people in it so that the poor could also avail better treatment services.

He said the government had constituted a Health Regulatory Authority which would try to regulate fees of doctors and propose a list of standard medicines to be prescribed for particular diseases. He said the authority would abolish irregularities in the health system.

A health department official, Dr Javed, said primary health facility was the right of every citizen but the government was spending less than one per cent of the Gross National Product on it.

Because of lack of facilities at the public sector hospitals, most of the people went to the private hospitals, he said.

The director of the Abaseen Institute, Dr Ziaul Hassan said the scheme would provide essential health care to at least 30 per cent of the people in the province.