Maternal, newborn and child health

WHO's reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health programme provides technical support to health authorities at federal, provincial and area levels for implementing maternal, newborn and child health strategies and programmes. In this regard, technical staff is recruited by WHO in all 4 provinces and at federal level to ensure effective coordination and collaboration.

Quality of care for maternal and newborn health

WHO is partnering with UNICEF to support Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination in developing a Strategic Framework on Quality of Care to improve quality of services for mothers and newborns in the country. In partnership with UNICEF and UNFPA, WHO is supporting implementation of maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Best practices and learning from this experience will be documented and used as guidance for technical and geographical scaling up over the next years, especially in the priority districts where family practice approach will be implemented. 

WHO has provided technical support to the federal and provincial departments of health for translating the National Health Vision (2016-2025) into 5-year Costed Strategic Action Plans for all 4 provinces and 3 Regions of the country. These action plans provide guidance for implementation, as well as being a powerful advocacy tool for domestic and foreign resource mobilization to support reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health programming. WHO is also committed to support development of monitoring and evaluation frameworks for tracking progress against the above mentioned action plans and achieving the set targets. 

Coordination with partners for family planning interventions

In line with the WHO’s evidence-based global guidance documents to support and strengthen national family planning programmes, WHO country office is joining hands with partners like UNFPA, Provincial Departments of Health and Population Welfare to ensure that the National Standards on Family Planning are updated and standardized training packages are available for consistently improved quality of trainings. A thorough consultative process will be adopted for mapping all relevant stakeholders and ensuring their engagement in updating the national standards and training materials. WHO is also committed to support training of trainers in priority districts where the family practice approach will be implemented. 

Capacity-building on newborn and child health strategies

WHO Pakistan, along with UNFPA and UNICEF, has supported federal, provincial and area governments in scaling up the globally recommended training strategies for improving reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health. These include pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal care (PCPNC), essential newborn care (ENC), nutrition stabilization centres (NSC) and Integrated Management of Newborn and Childhood Illnesses (IMNCI). WHO mainly supports training of trainers on these training packages followed by roll-out training with support from government and other partners. During the last biennium (2016-2017), WHO has trained more than 740 health care providerson the above mentioned topics; support for these capacity-building activities will continue during the next biennium (2018-2019) with a focus on priority districts where family practice approach will be implemented. In addition, WHO provides technical and financial facilitation for adapting global updates/revisions to these training strategies. In this context, revision of IMNCI modules will be completed by September 2017 along with development of an abridged IMNCI course (6-day) for large scale implementation.

Adaptation of global guidance on adolescent health and development

Under the leadership of National Nutrition Programme, Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination, WHO has local adoption of the Global Accelerated Action for Health of the Adolescents (AA-HA!) framework and initiated stakeholder discussion around adolescent nutrition in the country. Building on stakeholders recommendations, WHO is committed to national adaptation of the global guidance on adolescent health, nutrition and development. This will be done through a consultative process involving all relevant stakeholders from federal, provincial and area levels. 

Generate operational learning from integrated service delivery

Recognizing the importance of local evidence to guide programme planning and reforms, WHO plans to undertake a prioritization exercise to identify technical topics for operational research. In particular, the learning and best practices from integrated reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition service delivery in the districts implementing family practice approach will be documented. For this purpose, WHO will expand its partnership to academic institutions including Health Services Academy, for supporting postgraduate students in research on priority topics.