LHW Management Review - Oxford Policy Management

Programme description
2 Programme description
2.1 Background
Purpose The Lady Health Worker Programme (LHWP) is an initiative of the MoH in
collaboration with the provincial and regional Departments of Health in Pakistan.
The Programme’s purpose or mission, expressed in its Strategic Plan, is ‘to promote health
and reduce poverty by bridging the gap between health services and communities by
providing high quality integrated health services at the doorsteps of communities’. The goal
is ‘to contribute to poverty reduction by improving the health of the people through cost
effectively preventing and treating common ailments at the community level’.
Role and services From its inception in 1993, the Programme has expanded to cover
almost all districts of Pakistan, providing outreach services to the poor in rural areas and
urban slums. The aim was to deploy 100,000 LHWs, each LHW providing coverage to
between 100 and 200 households in her community. The LHW was to be an agent of
change in the community. She would provide family planning services, and services that
addressed primary health care problems. She would be the catalyst for: increasing the
utilisation of health facilities, through referral of patients; increasing community initiated
health improvements, through organising village committees for men and for women; and
increasing the use of other primary health care services – for example, through promoting
vaccination and family planning (Figure 2.1). 11
Figure 2.1
The LHW through her outreach services
11
See Annex A, for a description of LHW services.
3