'UK to help reduce maternal, infant mortality rate'
By Hina Kiyani

ISLAMABAD—Federal Health Minister, Muhammad Nasir Khan Thursday said that Rs.10 billion pledged by United Kingdom (UK) would help reduce maternal and newborn children mortality rate across the country.
Addressing a joint press conference with UK Minister for International Development, Gareth Thomas here, he said about 25,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth and 160,000 babies die in their first month of life every year across the country.
"The government has initiated a national Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) policy and strategic framework to reduce high mother and child mortality rate and the United Kingdom has committed Rs.10 billion for this programme," he added.
The Minister said the government will spend Rs.29 billion for improvement of maternal and child health for which 70 percent funding would be made available through own resources.
The support means that the UK will be funding more than one third of the entire programme, he added. Nasir Khan said that the women of reproductive age and their children, especially the poorest, will benefit most from this programme.
He said the national programme will save the lives of at least 30,000 women and 100,000 babies, and prevent serious ill health and disability for 3.5 million women between 2006 and 2011.
These improvements to health systems will transform the health and quality of life of 10 million families across the country and will also avert deaths and ill health well beyond 2011, he added.
Gareth Thomas, who is visiting Pakistan ahead of the one-year commemoration of the earthquake of October 2005, said, "A woman in Pakistan is 120 times more likely to die a maternal death than a woman in the UK. For poor women the risk is even higher."
He said the UK is contributing to this new Pakistan-led initiative to train more community-based midwives, provide better family planning services and have skilled staff who can safely deliver babies in an emergency in all district hospitals.
The programme will also help women and their families to improve their knowledge and take healthy action for a safe pregnancy, he added.