Improved education and health tie up human capital growth.

The significance of human capital in the development and expansion of economy could not be emphasized further. Its status could be gauged in any economy by education and health indicators as their main parameters. Productivity could be boosted if healthy people are inducted in work force as they could work efficiently and effectively. Fundamental health indicators have been on a positive path for the past few years. However, despite this advancement, the pace of progress is far low, when evaluated with the improvement recorded by regional countries. State of education sector, on the other hand, is also poor. Education sector is facing various hurdles including underinvestment, capacity deficient public sector together with costly and unregulated private sector.

There is a strong positive relationship of human capital (education enrolment, decline in infant mortality rate, and physical capital) and health indicators (life expectancy, infant mortality rate, health expenditure and population per bed) on economic growth. Despite improvements in the basic health indicators of child mortality and nutrition over time, the state of health sector is very bleak. The rising population coupled with alarming health indicators especially in the case of children health outcomes, is a source of great concern and is an indication of lack of clear and long term vision in public health policies. Current challenges include natural catastrophes, institutional, administrative and political changes, weak commitments to economic reforms, lack of capacity and willingness to carry out large-scale projects and fading commitments by the development partners due to factors like global recession and delayed ownership of SDG agenda at provincial and federal level.

Provision of health services depend on conditions and availability of basic health infrastructure (Health establishment and health personnel). Therefore, state of health infrastructure is of great importance especially in connection to...

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