Background Family Planning (FP) program in Pakistan has been struggling to achieve the desired indicators. Despite a well-timed initiation of the program in late 50s, fertility decline has been sparingly slow. As a result, rapid population growth is impeding economic development in the country. A high population growth rate, the current fertility rate, a stagnant contraceptive prevalence rate a...

Quality assessment and improvement activities are as relevant to the public health sector and community-based health care organizations as they are to the rest of the health care industry. This article provides a framework for the types of quality assessment and improvement approaches available to public health and community-based health care organizations and provides two examples drawn from t...

INTRODUCTION Health facilities assessments are an essential instrument for health system strengthening in low- and middle-income countries. These assessments are used to conduct health facility censuses to assess the capacity of the health system to deliver health care and to identify gaps in the coverage of health services. Despite the valuable role of these assessments, there are currently no...

The Tobacco Convention was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003. Nikogosian and Kickbusch examine the five potential impacts of the Tobacco Convention and its Protocol on public health. These include the adoption of the Convention would seem to unlock the treaty-making powers of WHO; the impact of the Convention in the global health architecture has been phenomenal globally; t...

1. Murray CJL, Lopez AD. Global health statistics: a compendium of incidence, prevalence and mortality estimates for over 200 conditions. Cambridge: Harvard School of Public Health on behalf of the World Health Organization and the World Bank, 1996. 2. Marder SR. Integrating pharmacological and psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2000; 102 (Suppl. 407): 87–90. 3. Bur...

In their paper, Nikogosian and Kickbusch show how the effects of the adoption by the World Health Organization (WHO) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) and its first Protocol extend beyond tobacco control and contribute to public health governance more broadly, by revealing new processes, institutions and instruments. While there are certainly good reasons to be optimisti...

background family planning (fp) program in pakistan has been struggling to achieve the desired indicators. despite a well-timed initiation of the program in late 50s, fertility decline has been sparingly slow. as a result, rapid population growth is impeding economic development in the country. a high population growth rate, the current fertility rate, a stagnant contraceptive prevalence rate a...