Goals, objectives or targets related to nutrition:
The government plans to increase expenditure on the health sector; establish in co-ordination with donor organizations the cost of a basic per capita package of primary health care, and work towards gradually increasing government expenditure to ensure this; increase the salaries of health sector employees; design a system of targeted exemption from paid medical services; take over full state nuancing of immunization programs (excluding hepatitis B); design public awareness campaigns to help improve maternal and new-born welfare, as well as campaigns to reduce the incidence of TB, malaria, iodine-deficiency and HIV/AIDS; design public awareness campaigns for health life styles and nutrition, especially targeted to poor; improve the protection of the population’s reproductive health; improve the information collection system for producing the main health indicators and adoption of international standard definitions for key health indicators; improve training of health sector staff, including raising awareness of the need to shift to more user-friendly services and the need to concentrate on prevention rather than just treatment of the illnesses most prevalent among the most vulnerable sections of the population; and finally monitor access to clean drinking water as well as other environmental factors affecting health.
The second main thrust of reform is that of developing cost-effective health care services; i.e. Elaborating specific interventions that have proved to be effective in the improvement of the population’s health status and which can be provided at relatively low cost. Such measures include health education campaigns, improved immunization programs, and improved treatment practices, such as Integrated Management of Child Illnesses (IMCI), safe motherhood and new-born care, the salt iodization program.
Apart from cooperating with donors on comprehensive primary health care reform, the government envisages the following to achieve these objectives:
- Increase expenditure on health sector (MTEF)
- Improve training of health sector staff, including raising awareness of the need to shift to more user-friendly services and the need to concentrate on prevention rather than just treatment of the illnesses most prevalent among the most vulnerable sections of the population
- Design public awareness campaigns to help improve maternal and new-born welfare, as well as campaigns to reduce the incidence of TB, malaria, iodine-deficiency and HIV/AIDS
- Improve food provision to IDPs
- Improve housing, water supply and sanitation, income generation, health status of IDPs etc.
- Protection of public health by improving food safety
- Design public awareness campaigns for healthy life styles and nutrition, especially targeted to the poor
- Monitor access to clean drinking water as well as other environmental factors affecting health
- Influence healthy lifestyles through counseling and health education.