Next month, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors is expected to propose a $258 million National Health Support Programme (NHSP) to improve equitable delivery and quality of basic health services at the primary care level in support of Universal Health Coverage.
According to official papers, the NHSP is expected to be co-financed by grant resources totaling around $130 million, with $80 million coming from the Global Financing Facility (GFF).
To fund the Disbursement-linked Indicators (DLIs) and the Insurance Premium Finance (IPF) component, the credit and grant will be combined.
Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Punjab, Sindh, and the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination will all benefit from the planned NHSP (MoNHSR&C).
Its goal is to help the Government of Pakistan’s (GoP) Universal Health Coverage (UHC) initiative, which focuses on implementing the program’s benefits package at the primary and secondary care levels.
The planned NHSP would assist provincial governments in improving the equitable delivery and quality of critical health services at the primary health care (PHC) level, as health is a devolved issue.
While the government’s program includes services for primary and secondary care, the NHSP’s scope is limited to primary and secondary care, which is defined in Pakistan as services supplied to Rural Health Centres and below, including at the community level.
As a result, funding from the Program for Results (PforR) will not directly support secondary or tertiary care.
Furthermore, while the NHSP will mostly be implemented by Pakistan’s provincial governments, the PforR aims to assist the MoNHSR&C in strengthening its capacity for coordination, research, and reporting on the country’s progress toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
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