Second
Long Term Health Plan, 1997-2017
The Ministry of Health developed a 20-year Second
Long-Term Health Plan (SLTHP) for the period 1997-2017.
The aim of the SLTHP is to guide health sector
development in the improvement of the health of
the population, particularly those whose health
needs are not often met.
The
objectives of the SLTHP are defined by the document
are as follows:
1. To improve the health status of the population
of the most vulnerable groups, particularly those,
whose health needs are not often met-women and
children, the rural population, the poor, the
underprivileged, and the marginalized population.
2. To extend cost-effective public health
measures and essential curative services for the
appropriate treatment of common diseases and injuries
to all districts.
3. To provide the appropriate numbers, distribution
and types of technically competent and socially
responsible health personnel for quality healthcare
throughout the country, particularly in under-served
areas.
4. To improve the management and organisation
of the public health sector and to increase the
efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare
system.
5. To develop appropriate roles for NGOs, and
the public and private sectors in providing and
financing health services.
6.
To improve inter-and intra-sectoral co-ordination
and to provide the necessary conditions and support
for effective decentralisation with full community
participation.
The following targets related to reproductive
health have been set for the second long term
health plan (1997-2017):
1. To reduce the infant mortality rate to
34.4 per thousand live births;
2. To reduce the under-five mortality rate to
62.5 per thousand;
3. To reduce the total fertility rate to 3.05;
4. To increase life expectancy to 68.7 years;
5. To reduce the crude birth rate to 26.6 per
thousand;
6. To reduce the crude death rate to 6 per thousand;
7. To reduce the maternal mortality rate to 250
per hundred thousand births;
8. To increase the contraceptive prevalence rate
to 58.2 percent;
9. To increase the percentage of deliveries attended
by trained personnel to 95%;
10. To increase the percentage of pregnant women
attending a minimum of four antenatal visits to
80%;
11. To reduce the percentage of iron-deficiency
anaemia among pregnant women to 15%;
12. To increase the percentage of women of child-bearing
age
(15-44)
who receive tetanus toxoid (TT2) to 90%;
13. To decrease the percentage of newborns weighing
less than 2500 grams to 12%;
Reproductive Health
ICPD defines reproductive health as "a state
of complete physical, mental and social well being
not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
in all matters relating to the reproductive system
and to its functions and processes". The
National Reproductive Health Strategy of Nepal
(adopted in 1997) includes the following elements
to make integrated reproductive health services
available in the kingdom. These include:
Below we present information on these components
wherever data is available.
Family Planning
Following are the objectives of the
family planning programmes in Nepal:
1. Space and/or limit their children;
2. Prevent unwanted pregnancies;
3. Manage infertility; and
4. Improve their overall reproductive
health
To achieve the 9th plan targets, it was estimated
that 1,690,000 couples need to be using a modern
method of contraception by the end of the Ninth
Plan. The family planning programme has placed
greater emphasis on promoting temporary methods
of contraception especially for spacing of births.
To attain this target, the following strategies
were planned and implemented:
1.
IEC activities for the creation of demand for
family planning services
2. Provision and expansion of
different family planning services
3. Improvement of the quality
of FP services
4. Minimization of duplication
of efforts between government sector, NGO and
INGOs.
