Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

664 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/9388

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Pakistan Health Financing System Assessment: Providing an Empirical Foundation for National and Sub-National Health Financing Strategy Dialogues - Policy Brief
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-13) World Bank
Accelerated progress towards and achievement of universal health coverage (UHC) has become a central goal of the Government of Pakistan’s (GoP) policy agenda in health in recent years. Both at the center and in the provinces, Pakistan’s domestic governments have now consistently reiterated, through the National Health Vision 2016–2025 and other essential agenda setting documents, their joint commitments to making UHC and primary care access a priority across the country. The federal and provincial governments have initiated critical UHC and primary health care (PHC) related interventions. First, Pakistan has become an early adopter of the Disease Control Priority 3 (DCP3) framework and, in collaboration with the DCP3 Secretariat and the World Health Organization (WHO), has begun implementing for the first time a prioritized Essential Package of Health Services (EPHS). Another major program led by the federal government and now adopted by the provincial governments is the social health protection initiative, the Sehat Sahulat Program (SSP). The program, a tax-financed scheme, provides cash-free coverage to inpatient hospital services at empaneled public and private hospitals for eligible low-income populations (households earning less than US2 dollar per day). The EPHS and the public health insurance scheme are two promising developments that together hold the potential to expand health coverage, grow existing health finance resource pools, and improve efficiency of public health expenditures. Each would in turn help achieve broader objectives in a health financing system that has to date produced concerningly lagging health and human development outcomes. However, faced with resource needs significantly higher than current health expenditures, and a particularly turbulent near-term macro-fiscal environment, the GoP’s ability to sustainably fund crucial UHC priorities has become decidedly uncertain.
Missing School - The Effect of Crises on Students and Teachers in Pakistan
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-03) Isa, Sana; D'Angelo, Sophia; Barón, Juan D.
Pakistani children have faced nationwide and severe disruptions to their schooling over the past several years, first due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then the 2022 floods. Given the country’s vulnerability to climate change, these disruptions are likely to increase. This note explores the government’s response to COVID-19 and school closures in Pakistan; it shows how data disaggregated by gender, household location, and other variables can inform a more effective and inclusive education response and build the education system’s resilience to future emergencies.
Understanding Socioeconomic Factors in Climate Change Awareness and Action
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-12-05) Asad, Saher; Dahlin, Lauren N.; Barón, Juan D.
Climate change has profoundly affected Pakistan, manifesting in altered weather patterns and devastating floods. According to projections, Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to decrease by a minimum of 18 to 20 percent by 2050 due to severe climate-related occurrences, environmental deterioration, and air contamination. This policy note presents findings from a phone survey that explores the socio-economic factors influencing the level of concern and likelihood of action regarding climate change.
Children and Their Families Six Months After Pakistan’s Floods
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-11) Dahlin, Lauren; Barón, Juan D
From June to August 2022, heavy monsoon rains caused severe flooding in nearly one-third of Pakistan. By February 2023, flood waters have receded in most areas, allowing for rebuilding to begin after widespread losses. Using a new round of household phone survey data, this note documents the progress and pain points in rebuilding human capital in Pakistan after the floods, building upon the findings from the first-round survey. Both rounds of the survey focus on the impacts of the floods on children and families. Specifically, this note focuses on groups who may be left behind as others recover. The note also examines indicators of recovery of particular relevance to children. Findings suggest that policymakers could ensure relief reaches the areas hardest hit by flooding and target at-risk groups in specific intervention areas.
Floods in Pakistan: Human Development at Risk
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-11-01) Baron, Juan; Bend, Mary; Roseo, Elena Maria; Farrakh, Izza; Barone, Andrea
This note assesses the effects of the 2022 floods on human capital in Pakistan. It focuses on the results of a Pakistan-wide phone survey that gathered information on the experiences of approximately 4,000 families with children ages 3 to 17. The survey was originally designed to track children’s return to school after school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the team adapted the survey methodology to ensure that it could better document and understand the challenges families with children are facing during the 2022 floods and that the country is experiencing as it seeks to protect and rebuild human capital for the future.
SMS Girl Data Insights: How Has COVID-19 Affected Support for Girls’ Education in Punjab, Pakistan?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04) Hasan, Amer; Tahir, Ayesha
This brief presents initial findings from an ongoing phone survey of families in Punjab, Pakistan designed to assess what is happening to girls’ elementary school education during COVID-19. The data used in this brief describe the experiences of 5,898 families in Punjab between August and October 2020. Data have been weighted to make the sample representative of all schools in Punjab. This brief provides information from an on-going survey. Further data is being collected and analyzed. Subsequent briefs will provide updates on these families as we learn more about their experiences. Unless otherwise noted, statistics are based on the full sample of households contacted, 90 percent of which are families with girls in grades 5-7 before the pandemic. Statistics are weighted to make the sample representative of all schools in Punjab and to allow comparisons between boys and girls.
Impacts of COVID-19 on Labor Markets and Household Well-Being in Pakistan: Evidence From an Online Job Platform
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02) Tas, Emcet O.; Ahmed, Tanima; Matsuda, Norihiko; Nomura, Shinsaku
This brief uses the administrative database of Pakistan’s largest online job platform and an online COVID-19 survey to examine the gender impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor markets and other well-being indicators. The analysis shows that the pandemic led to an unprecedented level of economic insecurity, resulting in widespread job loss, business closures, slowdown in business activity, and reduced working hours. The sectors where women are more likely to be employed, such as education and health, were more severely affected, yet the post-pandemic recovery was faster for males. The pandemic has also led to a disproportionate increase in women’s unpaid care work, as well as increasing their reported rates of stress, anxiety and exposure to violence. These findings suggest that impacts resulting from COVID-19 might lead to further declines in women’s participation in the economy in Pakistan, where women’s labor force participation is already among the world’s lowest.
Groundwater and Surface Water in the Mega-Irrigation Systems of Pakistan: The Case for Conjunctive Management
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) van Steenbergen, Frank
Groundwater use has increased across Pakistan, nowhere more than in the large canal-irrigated areas of the Indus basin irrigation system (IBIS). These mega-irrigation systems use surface water and groundwater, often in equal measure. The two water sources are the same source and should be managed as such. Groundwater supplied by seepage from the surface system is pumped up to complement surface water supplies. The delivery of surface water supplies determines how much groundwater is used and how much recharge will happen. In most cases, such conjunctive management will not 'cost' extra water to make significant gains in yields and support drought resilience. This case study discusses Pakistan’s contrasting experiences with conjunctive use in the Punjab and Sindh provinces and attempts to move toward conjunctive management.
Groundwater Management in Balochistan, Pakistan: A Case Study of Karez Rehabilitation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Ashraf, Muhammad; ul Hasan, Faizan
Balochistan is an arid region with limited and seasonal surface water resources. It is also home to the ancient Karez water supply system that has long served as a buffer against droughts. About one-third of the 3,000 such systems that were believed to be in place in 1970 are still functioning. Aside from its cultural and historical significance, the Karez system has helped transform the agrarian landscape of the uplands, improving socioeconomic conditions. However, recurring droughts since the 1960s resulted in reduced recharge to groundwater supporting the Karez systems at a time of growing demands. To maintain their livelihoods, farmers installed tubewells, aided by energy subsidies from the provincial government.
Mitigating Floods for Managing Droughts through Aquifer Storage: An Examination of Two Complementary Approaches
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Pavelic, Paul
Interventions that are robust, cost effective, and scalable are in critical demand throughout South Asia to offset growing water scarcity and avert increasingly frequent water-related disasters. This case study presents two complementary forms of intervention that transform water hazards (floodwater) into a resource (groundwater) to boost agricultural productivity and enhance livelihoods. The first intervention, holiya, is simple and operated by individual farmers at the plot/farm scale to control local flooding in semiarid climates. The second is the underground transfer of floods for irrigation (UTFI) and operates at the village scale to offset seasonal floods from upstream in humid climates. Rapid assessments indicate that holiyas have been established at more than 300 sites across two districts in North Gujarat since the 1990s, extending the crop growing season and improving water quality. UTFI knowledge and experience has grown rapidly since implementation of a pilot trial in western Uttar Pradesh in 2015 and is now embedded within government programs with commitments for modest scaling up. Both approaches can help farmers redress the multiple impacts associated with floods, droughts, and groundwater overexploitation at a range of scales from farm plot to the river basin. The potential for wider uptake across South Asia depends on setting up demonstration sites beyond India and overcoming gaps in technical knowledge and institutional capacity.