November 14, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 8, 1423

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RAWALPINDI, Nov 13: The city’s population lacks a credible preventive health cover because of the ‘indifferent attitude’ of the officials concerned of autonomous hospitals to the issue and their resultant inability to back-up the district health department’s initiatives in this regard.

Sources told this reporter on Wednesday that the district health authorities had sought a meeting with the principal executive officer, autonomous hospitals, to convey their ‘reservations’ on this count and regarding strengthening of coordination between the two health care providers.

The worst hit programme has been the tuberculosis control DOTS treatment.

Tuberculosis — a major public health challenge — is spreading at an alarming rate in Rawalpindi district, particularly, in the city due to rapid urbanization and pervasive poverty, besides a number of other factors.

At present, there are 800 registered patients with the district health department, most of whom come from the surrounding rural areas, but none from the city. Unconfirmed figures put the TB prevalence rate in the city at around 1,750.

Pakistan is the fifth country in the world with the highest number of TB cases and according to a report there are about 270,000 cases of this disease every year. Half of them are in the Punjab.

Doctors have warned that the TB situation might worsen if correctional measures were not adopted immediately. They say one uncured patient infects about 10 cases annually.

The health department officials said DOTS might not be able to achieve its target without the active support of the autonomous hospitals which were the biggest health service providers in the city.

“The autonomous hospitals have all the required facilities to carry out diagnosis,” an official said, and added that the health department was ready to provide reagents and drugs to the autonomous hospitals.

About the cause of ‘indifference’ of the autonomous hospitals, the health department officials said preventive care was not on the priority of the teaching faculty.

The other problematic programme is the malaria detection. The sources said the hospitals provided treatment to patients, but did not pass information regarding the occurrence of the disease to the department.

Their timely feedback would help our workers reach the area from where the cases had been reported and carry out spray to check the problem, an official said.

The officials further said the Disease Early Warning System was another area of concern and would like the autonomous hospitals to do more.

“The source detection cannot be done by the autonomous hospitals and they will have to coordinate with the department for this purpose,” one of the officers said.

To a question regarding the immunization programme (EPI), they said though it was relatively working well, it too was not without problems. They said the autonomous hospitals did not report back the cases which discontinued their immunization course.

“If we are given such information, we may trace the cases and ensure the continuation of immunization,” an officer said.