It adopts the vision and mission set forth by the National Health Policy and carries the ethos of Constitutional provision to guarantee universal access to basic health services. NHSS places health at the centre of overall socio-economic development.
It guides the health sector’s response in realizing government’s vision to graduate Nepal from ‘Least Developed Country’ to ‘Middle Income Developing Country’ by 2022. Developed within the context of Sector Wide Approach (SWAp), it sees partnership as a cornerstone for health development in Nepal. The strategy was developed jointly by the government and its development partners and commit to align their efforts to NHSS priorities and are jointly accountable to achieve the results. NHSS also harnesses multi sectoral approach to address social determinants of health.
Annual reviews and a Mid Term Review (MTR) will measure progress across the sector and make necessary adjustments. While there were calls for reforms to the ministry’s organogram to effectively implement the NHSS-IP, Ministry of Health has not included such reforms in this document as the country is imminently being re-organised through federal form of governance outlined by the Constitution of Nepal (2015). The ministry felt, however, that proposed new structures should be used to inform the restructuring of the sector and has retained it in the Annex of this document (See Annex 1). The functions of different departments, divisions and centres within the Ministry will be reviewed and realigned as applicable during the restructuring process. As agreed in the Joint Annual Review (2016), this plan will be implemented between the fiscal years 2016/17 to 2020/2021; the MoH will submit the revised NHSS timeframe accordingly to the Council of Ministers. In this NHSS IP, year 1 refers to fiscal year 2073/74 (2016/17) and consecutively year 5 refers to 2077/78 (2020/21).
