The Gateway Paper--stewardship and governance in the health sector in Pakistan

Abstract

As an opening for a dialogue on health reforms in the country, the Gateway Paper places emphasis on strengthening the stewardship function of mandated State agencies in Pakistan with particular attention to two key areas. Firstly, greater emphasis on a stewardship role for the Ministry and departments of health in the context of inter-sectoral scope of health and secondly, a stronger role for the State agencies as regulators of healthcare within the country. The Gateway Paper envisages that the role of State agencies will become more critical as new models of financing health and delivering services are structured given that these entail regulation of private sector providers, providing oversight for ensuring a system for ongoing education and implementation of frameworks for public-private partnerships. The Gateway Paper refers to stewardship with reference to analysis and overview of health policies within the country, their relationship with evidence, their follow-up into planning and finally their implementation. The Paper also provides an insight into policies from a process-related as well as content and program related perspectives. In doing so a number of questions relating to the evidence and policy disconnect; issues at strategic and operational levels of planning, and governance-related impediments to program implementation have been discussed and a viewpoint articulated on an approach to addressing these challenges.