PR No. 11 9TH PUBLIC HEALTH CONFERENCE, HEALTH SERVICES ACADEMY ACHIEVING UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE IS OF PRIMARY FOCUS, MINISTER NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICES Islamabad: 4 December, 2018

Today at 9th Public Health Conference, Federal Health Minister shared national vision of Health reforms in the country. While inaugurating Health conference, Federal Minister said that Health is key for quality of life, and the key to social sector development. Although Pakistan made some improvements in health, but there is still a need to make more efforts to achieve our health-related targets by 2030. While sharing the challenges faced to the Health sector, Minister Aamer Mehmood Kiyani, said that we knew there are gaps in health systems. We know that health is not spread evenly throughout the country; there are variations in different parts of our country; but this gap has to be minimized. Achieving Universal Health Coverage is one of our main priority areas. We intend to cover whole of Pakistan through Insurance Program and Health Cards by 2020. To promote preventive health measures, Federal Minister also highlighted the need of improvement in immunization coverage and its quality, across the country for better health status of nation. Improving quality and access to Reproductive, Maternal and Newborn health services and specifically population planning and institutional deliveries, is another area of our focus. Minister highlighted on creating more effective regulatory environment for health in various areas like Health Councils, Healthcare commissions, drugs & devices and others to ensure quality in health. This also has the potential to address our huge Human Resource challenges in Pakistan “Global solutions to health problems are emerging regularly, we need to incorporate new technologies in our national health system. Pakistanis going to be as good as any of the developed country, So, investing in health is crucial and need of the hour to achieve local targets but also to contribute to Global Health goals”, said Minister at the ceremony. Minister directed the academy to prepare and submit a new expansion plan to upgrade Health Services Academy to university status from the degree awarding status, it has achieved recently. **-*-*-**

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