The World Bank (WB) has approved a credit of US$10 million and a grant of US$40 million to expand access to, and increase the use of, essential health care services, especially by the poor and socially excluded populations in Nepal, a WB press release said.

The WB loan and grant assistance will be utilized through a five-year programme named as the Health Sector Programme (HSP).

The HSP will accomplish the above said objectives by developing and disseminating service standards- implementation of behaviour-change communication to affect care-seeking and provider attitudes, decentralization of responsibility and authority to districts and communities, introduction of improved planning, budgeting and fiduciary management, coordination between private and public sectors and so on, the release said.

For desired results, staff will be deployed in a more efficient manner and the impact of the above strategies for the programme on access, utilization and coverage will be closely monitored and evaluated, the WB has said.

The government of Nepal, after consultations for three years with non-health ministries, NGOs, the private sector, consumers, donors and health care providers, had approved the “Health Sector Strategy: An Agenda for Change” in December 2003 in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals which include reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases by 2015.

To implement this strategy, the government also prepared the Nepal Health Sector Programme-Implementation Plan (NHSP-IP). The WB has said that the NHSP-IP forms the core of the HSP, which it has approved on September 9.

“The programme represents a new way of thinking that is beginning to take root in Nepal about the delivery of basic services to poor, rural populations,” the release quoted Kenichi Ohashi, the WB’s Country Director for Nepal as saying. nepalnews.com amt Sep 13 04