Pakistan has one of the world’s best Lady Health Worker’s Programme and Pakistani assistance to Somalia for building a same successful system means a lot to us, International Consultant on Health System Dr Khalif Bile Mohamud said in a meeting with Punjab Health Secretary Captain (r) Arif Nadeem .
“We do not have a system like Pakistan’s National Programme for Family Planning in Somalia. Our traditions, moral values and behaviour towards family planning is almost same and that is why we are here to observe National Programme of family planning of Pakistan in detail to apply it in Somalia after understand its strengths, weakness and challenges in depth,” Dr Bile said. The 14 members of the Somalian mission had observed the functioning of LHS, LHW and National Policy of Family Planning and primary health care thoroughly during last two days.
Nadeem welcomed and assured the Somalian mission to help them whenever they would be in need to design models of LHS and LHW program in Somalia and said help would be provided to them in formulating the best possible strategies regarding their programme, adding that Pakistan was still to make a lot of improvements to its system.
Dr Akhter Rashid, while giving a presentation on different models of LHS and LHW system, he said 48,500 lady health workers were working to improve health quality of general public. “One LHW is responsible for approximately 1,000 to 1,250 people, or 150 homes, and visits 5 to 7 houses daily,” he said. The scope of work and responsibility of LHW includes over 20 tasks, ranging from Health Education in terms of antenatal care and referral, immunisation services and support to community mobilisation, provision of family planning and basic curative care.
Earlier, Somalian mission also visited health house and BHU in Gujranwala, where they met with Gujranwala Health EDO Dr Azhar Masood Bhati, LHS’s and LHW’s of the town. “Pakistan proved to be a best school for us where we learnt a lot and hopefully we will apply all good things and strategies to apply same good community health workers program in Somalia,” the delegation said. Lahore Health DG Nisar Ahmad Cheema, WHO Representative to Pakistan, Dr Guido Sabatenelli, WHO Technical Officer Somalia, Dr Humayun Rizwan, WHO Punjab Operations Officer Dr Babar Alam and Punjab LHW Provincial Coordinator Dr Akhtar Rashid were also participated in that meeting.
