Kathmandu, June 19 -- The Family Welfare Division under the Department of Health Services has not proposed expanding the maternal and perinatal death surveillance programme for the upcoming fiscal year citing the budget ceilings that leave no room for scaling up existing healthcare programmes.

Officials say that even if new health care programmes are designed, it is very difficult to convince officials to allocate a budget, and even if budgets are allocated, most of the time, they are later asked to scrap the programme.

"We all know that budgets are made not on the basis of realistic assessment of the country's economic health and this makes it difficult to achieve targets," said an official in condition of anonymity, as he is not autho...