PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SERVICES IN DISTRICT MARDAN (KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA)

Health is the top most priority in every individual's life. Good health accelerates human \ud efficiency and the development procedure, and as a fundamental human right it should be \ud accessible and reachable to all. According to World Health Organization's definition, "Health of \ud an individual or community is not only concerned with physical or mental state but also an \ud individual's economic and social wellbeing." The research in hand focused on the Primary \ud Health Care Services provided by the Basic Health Units in Mardan District of Khyber \ud Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. The objectives of the study were: \ud ? to assess the health care services provided by the BHUs and \ud ? to find out the hurdles in the way of service delivery for the management of the BHUs. \ud The universe of the study was District Mardan of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of \ud Pakistan. The sample of the study was selected by multi-stage cluster sampling techniques. The \ud findings highlighted that most of the young people especially women goes to these BHUs for \ud mostly cough and flu or gynecological problems, while mostly men of the area prefer to go to \ud private clinics. The older women cannot go to the BHUs because they have difficulty in reaching \ud these BHUs which are located far away from their houses and the transport is not available for \ud them in the area. Most of the beneficiaries of the BHUs complained of low quality medicine, no \ud waiting area for the patients and attendants, and lack of LHVs or LHWs home visits in the \ud periphery. While the staff of BHUs who were mostly doctors complained of low salary, lack of \ud facilities provided by government and security threat in performing their duties especially for \ud polio vaccine