PESHAWAR: The government has upgraded 250 health facilities to cut down maternal and infant mortality rate by putting in place Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care in remote areas of the province.

The project to upgrade 200 basic health units and 50 rural health centres was launched in 2021 to cut down maternal mortality rate from 165 to 140 by the year 2023. The projectincluded renovation and establishment of labour rooms in the health facilities to ensure safe deliveries and avoid complications.

Dr Tanveer Inam, the deputy director of mother and child health (MCH) section at the directorate-general health services Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told Dawn that the project had already paid off as the situation with regard to mother and child health in already upgraded 66 facilities in the first phase had shown improvement. `The upgradation process has now been completed in all 250 facilities and services would begin soon after the approval of human resources there,` he added.

He said that it was a flagship project of the provincial government that was completed at a cost of about Rs3 billion.`The government has appointed 750 lady health visitors. They will be deployed in these facilities to ensure that the women get proper ante and post-natal services in their own areas.

The programme also covers the family planning matters to ensure population control as per the national and international commitments,` said Dr Tanveer.

He said that the programme was changing healthcare scenario in many districts as women received medical services on regular basis. He said that collection of data of pregnant women was also part of the programme to ensure safe deliveries as most of them were prone to low haemoglobin levels, which caused anaemia.

He said that regular checkups were necessary to take corrective steps.

`High blood pressure and malnourish-ment are among the causes of maternal mortality, which can be avoided through checkups,` he said. He added that many causes of maternal mortality were preventable.

Dr Tanveer said that a basic health unit, established in 1984, for the first time started labour room services where about 10 deliveries were taking place on average per week. `Previously, the BHUs were providing only primary care services for common illnesses.

Now there is a sea change as the women are visiting BHUs for services during pregnancies,` he said.

He said that a reproductive health core group committee was recently notified by health department with more powers to ensure better coordination among the health department, UN agencies and other partner organisations.`The programme also includes provision of well-furnished offices to women medical officers and lady health visitors so that patients can feel satisfaction and continue visiting their respective facilities. Additionally, waiting areas have been renovated with new seating arrangements to ensure proper facilitation of women, said Dr Tanveer.

He said that recently a meeting attended by high-ups of health department and representatives of Unicef, World Health Organisation, United Nations Population Fund and other partner organisations decided to carry out mapping of the districts and ensure that no duplication of activities took place.

Dr Tanveer said that health department wanted to stop wastage ofresources and allocate responsibilities to partner organisation as per need of the population in respective districts.

`Only those organisations, which have no-objection certificate issued by the government, will be allowed to worl(. There will be complete coordination to benefit more population,` he said.

He said that the meeting also took notice of the constraints regarding family planning, poor coordination among stakeholders, issues regarding information management, preparedness for emergency response, supply chain management, infection prevention control for waste disposal of labour rooms and improvement monitoring.

`We need quality data and coordination with the districts to achieve the desired goals,` said Dr Tanveer.