December 20, 2001	Thursday	Shawwal 4, 1422

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MULTAN, Dec 19: The Unicef has declared the Vehari DHQ Hospital as the first ‘baby-friendly’ hospital in the Punjab due to the diligent work done by its paediatricians.

It is learnt that Unicef teams paid frequent surprise visits to the hospital to monitor that whether the UNO body’s guidelines for such a prestigious award were being met.

Following the guidelines, the hospital management had banned the use of powder milk on its premises besides convincing the visiting mothers to avoid its use at home as well. The main aim of the campaign was to encourage breast-feeding. The management has also barred its staff from accepting gifts/products from the powder milk firms.

When talked, Dr Khalid Mehmood said the children ward staff had been imparted extensive training to first convince mothers to opt for breast-feeding and then how to incline them to feed their babies upto the age of two years.

He said the excessive use of powder milk had increased the infant mortality rate as the synthetic milk could not provide the required resistance to the new borns to fight the menace of multiple diseases. “Only the mother-milk can help children to gain both physical and mental strength”, he added.

Various research studies had proved that breast-feeding reduced the infant mortality rate wherever it was adopted again, he said. Quoting a Unicef report, he said mothers in advanced countries were fast switching over to breast-feeding.

He said the experience at the Vehari hospital had proved that 90 per cent of the mothers wanted to feed their babies, but doctors misguided them only to get small benefits from the powder milk firms.

After being declared the ‘baby-friendly’ hospital, the management had set a target to get declared Vehari as the ‘baby friendly city’ in the Punjab, he said.

For this purpose, a children welfare committee had been formed to promote the cause of breast-feeding in the area, he added.