Health minister decides to launch media campaign to promote healthy living

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for National Health Regulations & Coordination Aamer Mehmood Kiani on Tuesday decided to strengthen ties between the centre and provinces to address the issues of population and nutrition and to launch a media campaign to promote healthy living.

A coordination meeting with federal and provincial partners on population and nutrition will be held, he said during a meeting with World Bank Country Director Illango at the World Bank campus in Islamabad.

The country director iterated the fact that the World Bank had been supporting Pakistan in various development projects in the past and was committed to extend all its support in the future also.

The health minister said that Pakistan’s population was still very young with 62% under the age of 30 years and human capital was a driving factor in economic growth.

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“Pakistan is also facing a crisis in terms of malnutrition that is amongst the worst in the world and is losing about 3% of its GDP to stunting every year,” he said.

Although the recent PHDS shows an improvement from the past with stunting rates at 37.6%, however there is a severe disparity in the nutrition status across the provinces, it was observed.

To address both population and nutrition issues, the WB offered to bring in experts from counties having success as in both the areas to share their experiences.

In this regard a conference is tentatively planned for early 2019 involving the policy makers and implementers.

World Bank also offered to share analytics on health related issues with the ministry. It was concluded that:

Work on policies regarding these thematic areas of bilateral interest in light of best practices will be undertaken together with designing and implementation of projects addressing the identified themes.
Setting up achievable targets to measure success will be mutually negotiated.