WHO Regional Director Dr Hanan Balkhy concludes her first visit to Pakistan

Islamabad, 7 May, 2024 – WHO's Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Dr Hanan Balkhy, has concluded her inaugural sojourn to Pakistan. The broad five-day ngo spanned Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore, and included high-level meetings with authorities officials, visits to WHO-supported wellness facilities, and information successful the subnational polio vaccination campaign.

This was besides Dr Balkhy’s archetypal sojourn arsenic portion of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s high-level polio delegation, led by the Chair of the Polio Oversight Board and with representatives from the United States Centers for Disease Control, United Nations Children’s Fund and Rotary International. The high-level polio delegation met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Coordinator to the PM connected National Health Services Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad Bharat, and main ministers, main secretaries and wellness ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

The polio delegation learned astir progress, challenges and the strategies employed by the programme to extremity polio successful Pakistan, which is 1 of the past 2 countries globally with endemic transmission of chaotic poliovirus. The delegation emphasized the captious request to scope each children during vaccination campaigns, heighten coordination with Afghanistan’s polio programme, and intensify efforts to amended regular immunization coverage.

“While Pakistan has made important strides successful epidemiological progress, backed by a beardown illness surveillance system, it is indispensable to further fortify and integrate polio eradication with indispensable immunization programs portion we lend to gathering stronger wide nationalist wellness capacities,” said Dr Balkhy.

At a gathering with the Coordinator to the Prime Minister connected National Health, Dr Balkhy highlighted Pakistan's analyzable wellness landscape, citing recurring illness outbreaks exacerbated by floods successful Sindh and Balochistan. She besides discussed her caller flagship initiatives for the Region, aimed astatine ensuring equitable entree to medicines and effectual proviso concatenation management, boosting concern successful the wellness workforce and tackling substance use.

Dr Balkhy emphasized WHO’s committedness to bolstering superior wellness attraction systems and reducing communicable diseases specified arsenic HIV infections arsenic good arsenic noncommunicable diseases specified arsenic diabetes, portion recognizing Pakistan's imaginable successful the aesculapian proviso chain.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dr Balkhy learned astir WHO’s initiatives to fortify superior wellness attraction systems and beforehand cosmopolitan wellness sum successful the discourse of a state prone to aggregate wellness and climatic disasters, and with endemic transmission of chaotic poliovirus. She addressed a grooming connected Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response systems successful Peshawar and inaugurated the Neonatal Intensive Care Centre, Nutrition Centre and waiting country astatine the District Headquarter Hospital successful Haripur.

“More than 50% of neonatal deaths successful the Eastern Mediterranean Region are reported from Pakistan,” Dr Balkhy explained. “The facilities successful this centre volition play an important relation successful addressing gaps successful accessibility of neonatal attraction for children successful the catchment community.”

In summation to visiting WHO-supported wellness facilities, Dr Balkhy besides engaged with pistillate vaccinators astatine the Civil Dispensary successful Peshawar. She learned astir the enactment of woman wellness workers and community-based vaccinators who spell doorway to doorway during each run to present polio and different antigens.

“I was delighted to prosecute with women astatine the forefront supporting regular immunization efforts successful Peshawar,” Dr Balkhy said. “Their information successful the look of unthinkable challenges was inspiring. Their relation is much than conscionable administering vaccines; they are educating mothers and caregivers, successful crook empowering them with captious wellness information.”

In Lahore, Dr Balkhy learned astir innovative wellness initiatives to boost regular immunization rates crossed the province, including successful distant villages of Punjab, done mobile wellness clinics and digitized information absorption systems for microplanning and commencement registrations.

Together with WHO Representative Dr Luo Dapeng and UNICEF’s Regional Director for South Asia, Mr Sanjay Wijesekera, Dr Balkhy met with the UN Resident Coordinator, Mr Mohammad Yahya, successful Islamabad. They discussed the precise challenging economical and fiscal concern of the country, humanitarian issues and communal areas of enactment to amended accessible wellness attraction and eradicate polio successful Afghanistan and Pakistan. Stronger partnerships arsenic “One UN” are cardinal to addressing multifaceted challenges for a state of implicit 220 cardinal people.

Dr Balkhy besides visited the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio astatine the National Institutes of Health (NIH) successful Islamabad, wherever she learned however WHO-accredited labs for poliovirus and rotavirus and a subregional laboratory for measles and rubella enactment illness surveillance successful Pakistan and Afghanistan. Her treatment with Dr Muhammad Salman, CEO of NIH, highlighted the captious value of antimicrobial resistance.

During her sojourn to WHO’s Country Office, Dr Balkhy met with WHO unit and donated wellness supplies to nationalist focal points from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu and Kashmir wellness departments to beforehand cosmopolitan wellness coverage. She thanked the state squad for their enactment successful responding promptly to emergencies, strengthening wellness infrastructure and providing important capacity-building enactment to fortify Pakistan’s wellness workforce.

“WHO stands committed to supporting Pakistan’s nationalist wellness vision, aiming for cosmopolitan wellness sum done equitable and sustainable services. Our enactment remains unwavering arsenic we strive to trim nationalist wellness risks, eradicate polio, and fortify Pakistan’s wellness strategy done intensified coordination and mobilization of global, determination and nationalist resources,” Dr. Balkhy said.