NHSRC and BISP to improve mother and child health

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The Nutrition wing Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination (NHSRC) have combined resources with Benazir Income Support Programme to initiate conditional cash transfers (CCT) to improve maternal and child health.

According to Dr. Baseer Achakzai, director of NHSRC, 14,000 women die every year from child birth complications in Pakistan. What’s more is that because of a child suffering from malnutrition in the first 1000 days of his life, his/her growth can stunt. And the rate of stunting of children in Pakistan is a high 44 percent.

The project is still in its planning stage, but it is estimated that women of around 5 million Pakistani families will be able to take advantage of this initiative. The focus will be on their nutrition and health so that healthy children can be delivered from well-nourished mothers.

Marvi Memon, BISP chairman, noted that they had a couple of options to improve the health of child-bearing age, pregnant and lactating women. Option one is to hand out cash payments and the second option was to give food baskets that contained nutrition with essential micronutrients for these women.

According to Memon, the main goal of the program is to improve the health of a mother and a child across the poorest areas in Pakistan, while providing above satisfactory healthcare initiatives.

She said that after the 18th Amendment, health has become the next big subject to scrutinize in Pakistan on a provincial level. So much so that the provincial governments have been consulted and invited to plan a discourse of action for reaching and aiding the poorest of the poor in their region.

Article Source :  Tribune

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