Health Sector Strategic Planning Retreat Session held

Publish Date: Jan 27, 2012

The Health Sector Strategic Planning Retreat Session was widely held by Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) under the term of "Transition toward sustainable healthcare in Afghanistan" here in Kabul city on Wednesday. 

The session was attended by high ranking officials of the MoPH, Representatives of Afghan Parliament, Donor agency representatives, a number of diplomatic representatives of foreign countries and specialists.

Speaking at the session, Dr. Suraya Dalil, Acting Minister of Public health said that this Retreat focuses on certain aspects of the MoPH 2011-2015 Strategic Plan.  The expected outcomes of the retreat are consensus on the way forwarding the immediate, medium and long-term, as well as financial and political commitments.  The recommendations and decisions made during the retreat must be evidence-based, feasible, and sustainable.   

the focus for this year’s retreat are some areas that have been identified as needing special attention, especially given the challenge of sustainability the health sector is expecting to face from 2014 onwards in a period of decreased funding.

The urgent need for efficiency, harmonization, and exploring new options is clear.  During the retreat we believe that some of the recommendations generated will focus on Private Public Partnerships, insurance, and other sources of revenue such as corrective taxation.

"The last 10 years have been a success story for the Ministry of Public Health – we are often pointed to as a flagship ministry in Afghanistan for what we have achieved and how we accomplished those achievements.  That success came about with the support of the donors who invested in capacity building of the MOPH and funded critical strategic initiatives", Dr. Dalil added that.

A fine example of early aid coordination was the cooperation between the Ministry of Public Health, the European Union, USAID, and the World Bank back in 2002, who worked together to develop a Basic Package of Health Services, known as the BPHS, and for each donor to agree on which provinces they would fund so that access to health care reached a significant portion of the population.  As we all know, each of those donors took different approaches on how to contract out the BPHS, but the overall result was successful and continues to be built on, including contracting in for public facilities.

The challenge remains that only 60% of the Afghan population have access to a BPHS facility within a one hour walk, and there are differences in access for the urban and rural populations".

The Minister of Public Health said:," "There are many other examples of successful MoPH and donor teamwork as evidenced by the results of the recently published 2010 Afghanistan Mortality Survey. The significant increase over the last 10 years in life expectancy and decreases in maternal mortality, child mortality, infant mortality, and fertility rates are very encouraging, but still need improvement".

"For example, the infant mortality rate is now reported as 77 deaths per 1,000 births (or 1 in 13 infants) and it is estimated that the under-5 mortality rate for the whole country is 97 per 1000 births (or 1 in 10). Maternal mortality was 1,400 per 100,000 live births in 2007 and has decreased to 327 in 2010, which is equivalent to 1 maternal death every 2 hours", she clarified.

Our challenge for the coming years is building on these successes in the face of what appears likely to be a shrinking amount of donor funding coming at a time when the MoPH is ready to fully take on all the responsibilities of leadership and stewardship of the health sector. As you well know, other major challenges continue to be the security situation, staff turnover at all levels of the MoPH, and the geography of certain parts of the country, concluded Dr. Dalil.

There are also examples of where aid coordination in the health sector has been difficult – such as coordinating technical assistance and the creation of parallel financial, procurement and health information systems within the ministry to respond to donor needs. 

The MoPH 2011-2015 Strategic Plan was finalized last spring and is a point of reference that is being used, assessed, and updated as the situation changes. 

The Strategic Plan has indicated the Strategic Directions such as; improvement of the nutritional status, strengthening of human resource, increasing of equitable access to quality health services, improving of health financing and etc.