PESHAWAR: The health department will deploy 3,500 more lady health workers in Peshawar, Mardan, Tank, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and North and South Waziristan to improve primary health coverage, immunisation and women and child health scenario.

Officials said that finance department sanctioned Rs500 million for new recruitments and strengthening further the LHW programme in areas where health indicators were not up to a desired level.

Dr Saeed Rehman, the provincial coordinator LHW programme, told Dawn that those districts also required more staff in view of circulation of poliovirus. “LHWs play key role in immunisation,” he added.

He said that one LHW covered 1,000 houses in plain areas and from 700 to 800 houses in remote mountainous and scattered regions. He said that LHWs immunised people against vaccine-preventable childhood diseases including polio every month.

Officials say Rs500 million has been sanctioned for new recruitments

He said that In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the LHWs played significant during floods and outbreak of Covid-19 and dengue despite performing their own duty.

Dr Saeed said that the project was given extension from time to time since its launch in 1994 on the basis of scientific evidence that the areas covered by LHWs improved infant and maternal mortality rate as compared to those where they didn’t perform duty.

He said that LHWs played significant role in prevention of diseases through community-based health activities. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has more than 19,000 LHWs to provide free health services to the target population in all 35 districts.

Several LHWs have been killed by unidentified killers during anti-polio vaccination campaigns. An LHW owns an office titled “health house” in community where she maintains record of the people.

Belonging to same community, people respect LHWs and trust them and visit the health houses for their primary healthcare needs. They carry out checkups of pregnant women.

“Before deploying the newly-appointed staff in the field, they are given 15 months training on vaccination and health rated matters,” said Dr Saeed.

He said that they were implementing revised curriculum of primary healthcare and training was currently in progress. In the first phase, in eight districts, the LHWs would also make preventive efforts against non-communicable diseases including blood pressure, cancer, respiratory, mental ailments and diabetes.

Dr Saeed said that the new initiative was meant to scale up LHWs’ coverage in settled areas from existing 58 per cent to 75 per cent and in newly-merged districts from 21 per cent to 35 per cent.

He said that LHWs visited all target houses in their areas every month where they checked vaccination status of the children and monitored their growth besides examining the pregnant women and giving referral chit to those requiring urgent treatment in the nearby health facilities.

“Married women are hired as LHWs and they are deployed in the same community. In some areas, we don’t get services of matriculate women so we appoint middle passed ones,” said Dr Saeed.

He said that their staff referred patients to hospitals for antenatal and post-natal care to avoid delivery-related complications in addition to giving painkillers, vitamins, iron and other commonly used drugs to people free of cost besides recording their blood pressure, temperature and weight.

He said that several surveys showed that LHW-covered areas had better health indicators because they also gave advice to pregnant and lactating mothers in the household to help improve mother and child health indicators.

“LHWs are creating awareness among the people community. Primary healthcare is meant to cut down burden of diseases and pave the way for health lifestyle. Physical exercises ensure better health of people,” he said.

Dr Saeed said that United Nations Children Fund and World Health Organisation had been assisting the health department in the project.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2022