Karachi: A seven-member mission of the World Health Organisation has landed in Pakistan to assist the country’s federal and provincial health departments in their bid to develop a National Quality Policy and Strategy (NQPS), and to transform a few select private and public health institutes into ‘patient-friendly hospitals’, under WHO’S flagship Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative (PSFHI), a news source reported.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (PM) on Health Dr Zafar Mirza said that this joint mission of WHO and the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) had arrived on a five-day visit upon invite. He said that these experts had been tasked with identification of gaps of quality, patient safety and Infection Prevention Control (IPC) within the health system of Pakistan.
They will also provide full technical support to launch the WHO flagship PSFHI initiative at the selected hospitals of the federal capital and provincial headquarters, he added. These international health experts will also hold meetings with provincial and federal health authorities on these matters.
Moreover, the delegation will visit six major hospitals in Pakistan, including Shifa International Memorial Hospital and the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, General Hospital and the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital in Lahore, and Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) and Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) in Karachi.
