ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi has called for a greater focus on promoting preventive healthcare in the country which is not only cost-effective but would help reduce the disease burden. He said most of the diseases could be prevented by taking precautionary measures and Pakistan, being a developing country, could hardly afford to fully meet the healthcare needs of its over 220 million populations through curative treatments due to limited resources.

The President gave these remarks while chairing the 4th meeting of the Senate of the Health Services Academy (HSA), here at Aiwan-e-Sadr on Friday. The meeting was attended by the members of the Senate of HSA. During the meeting, the President said that Pakistan needed to make goal-oriented and time-bound plans to improve its public health sector, adding that preventive healthcare should be the priority of the country’s health policy.

He highlighted that some countries had tremendously improved their health sectors by focusing on preventive health and investing in the intellectual development of their human resources. The meeting was also briefed about the impacts of global warming and climate change which would likely increase the burden of diseases due to rising temperatures.

The meeting stressed the need for exploring funding options from international donors for research and development in the public health sector. It was also emphasized to develop a resource mobilization strategy to meet the future financial needs of HSA as well as the healthcare programmes in the country. The meeting also underscored the importance of devising a National Plan for Public Health to effectively address the challenges being faced by the country’s health sector. The meeting endorsed the minutes of the 3rd Senate meeting of the Health Services Academy.