HC Deb 26 June 1995 vol 262 cc469-70W
Mr. Alton

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what factors allow his Department to distinguish between funds donated by the Overseas Development Administration to primary health care and family planning in Bangladesh; and for what reasons his Department is unable to make this distinction in respect of the other countries where primary health care donations are made. [28962]

Mr. Baldry

[holding answer 19 June 1995]: Most health projects funded under the aid programme include, as one of their aims, the promotion of better reproductive health through provision of voluntary family planning, safer motherhood, and sexually transmitted disease services. Given that such services are generally integrated with other aspects of primary health care, it is extraordinarily difficult to identify expenditure which could be classed as primary health care "excluding family planning provision". In the case of Bangladesh, a distinction was made for projects under way in the 199394 financial year, although with great difficulty. We have concluded that for our professional staff to undertake further estimates in other countries would consume unreasonable amounts of public servants' time, preventing them from designing new and high-quality primary health care projects.