ISLAMABAD, June 22: Experts, financial managers and policymakers began a three-day conference on health issues here on Wednesday with a call for ensuring healthcare to all through financing, strengthening institutions and resolving conflicts for a better utilisation of resources for the benefit of the poor.

“Peace plays a pivotal role in the promotion of good health,” Health Minister Mohammad Nasir Khan said while inaugurating the conference organised by the Aga Khan Health Services, Pakistan (AKHS-P) at Serena Hotel.

The minister said the violence raging in Iraq, Afghanistan and some African countries had destroyed the health infrastructure in those countries and made healthcare services inaccessible to the poor.

In the last 10 years, the wars in the Eastern Mediterranean region had caused damage amounting to $37 billion to health sector, he said.

“The world is facing a tremendous challenge of providing healthcare services to the poorest of the poor in the face of an increase in deadly and communicable diseases, like HIV/AIDS and man-made and natural catastrophes”, the minister said.

Mr Khan stressed that health financing was a subject of significant debate globally as well as in Pakistan and was a complex issue requiring multi-sectoral involvement.

The minister asked donor agencies and NGOs to devise country-specific policies keeping in view indigenous needs and focus policies on key issues such as increased public financing and health investment, universal coverage, social safety nets anti-financial protection for the poor and low-income populations.

He said there is evidence that health systems predominantly funded by private sources faced challenges in providing equitable and accessible health services to the entire population.

When private financing, as a percentage of total health expenditure, exceeds 60-70 per cent, low-income and vulnerable populations are often pushed into poverty because of ill-health and catastrophic expenditure, he said.

The minister called for closer collaboration between the public and private sectors to supplement the government’s initiatives in delivering healthcare services.

“Spending in health sector is an investment and not an expenditure”, he said, adding that the government was giving top priority to health sector, citing a substantial increase in allocation from Rs3.4 billion to Rs12 billion in the budget for 2006-07.

Mr Khan listed initiatives undertaken by the health ministry to addressing health-related issues and cited the formation of the National Health Policy Unit which, he hoped, would guide the policymakers on key issues.

He appreciated the service being rendered by the Aga Khan Health Service in Pakistan through a wide coverage and scope of services, specially in delivering healthcare in the Northern Areas and Chitral.

The minister said the Aga Khan Development Network had been delivering social services in the country since its very inception. He cited the role of Janbai Maternity Home, Kharadar, one of the oldest health institutions of the country, that has been providing mother-child health services since 1924.

He hoped the main outcome of the meeting would strategise stronger public-private partnership with operational links to the key development goals and targets, as outlined in the report of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health and the Millennium Development Goals.

Minister Khan said health tourism was being encouraged to bring foreign investment and that the private sector had been allowed to set up hospitals in backward areas.

He dispelled the notion that no major hospital had been set up by the present government and said: “We have set up 12 hospitals within Pims (Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences).”

Dr Gijs Walraven, Director Community Health at Social Welfare Department at Aiglement, France, presented an overview of AKDN’s activities in health sector in various countries and said the “network’s health services take care of more than 2.5 million patients annually”.

Earlier Aga Khan Health Service-Pakistan CEO Dr Zulfiqar Ali, in his welcome address, introduced the AKDN, which is engaged in health and education to architecture, culture, rural development and the promotion of private sector enterprises active in over 30 countries includung Central Asia.