The first institution in the Aga Khan Health Service, Pakistan (AKHS,P) was a 42-bed maternity hospital - formerly known as the Janbai Maternity Home, which opened in Karachi in 1924. Today, while maintaining that early focus on maternal and child health, AKHS,P also offers services that range from primary healthcare to diagnostic services and curative care. It reaches over 700,000 people in rural and urban Sindh, Punjab, Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. As the largest not-for-profit private healthcare system in Pakistan, its goal is to supplement the government's efforts in health care provision, especially in the areas of maternal and child health and primary healthcare.
AKHS,P funds come from a variety of sources. As a vital ingredient in social welfare systems, which aim to become self-sustaining, user fees are consistently set, even for the most highly subsidised services. AKDN is testing a wide mix of financing tools, including micro-insurance and the use of vouchers to protect the poor and reduce the reliance on user fees. This principle is actually serving to broaden access to AKHS,P services.
AKHS,P operates 125 basic health centres, 6 comprehensive health centres and the Aga Khan Gilgit Medical Centre. AKHS, P now also operates 5 government health centres in public-private partnership agreements. In the North of Pakistan, AKHS,P has been implementing the Northern Pakistan Primary Healthcare Programme since 1987. Working in partnership with local communities, the government, and other AKDN institutions, like the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, the goal has been to find sustainable ways of financing and delivering primary healthcare in the high-mountain valleys. This has led to a village-based approach -- the designation of community health workers by the local village organisation, the training of these workers in community-based disease prevention, and the reorientation of health professionals (government and private) to primary healthcare. Through this and related programmes, AKHS,P has been working to promote a new orientation of health services in Pakistan towards primary healthcare.
Close collaboration with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and the Aga Khan University (AKU), as well as with the government health systems, has been the cornerstone of this endeavour. This is driven by a desire to build health systems linking preventive and curative care efforts, as well as the different levels in the AKHS,P and the government health systems, from the village health centre to the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi.
Prince Aly Khan Hospital is a 162-bed multi-specialty acute care hospital that, by extending the range and quality of its clinical services, has become the hospital of choice for the local population within its catchment area in South Mumbai. The hospital is ISO 9002 certified.
