KARACHI: Health care for children govt’s top priority
KARACHI, Jan 11: The Sindh health department will make all possible efforts to ensure that the programme on integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI) received the highest priority of government to reduce the infant and under-five mortality rate in the province.
This was stated by Dr Srichand Ochani, additional secretary health, while inaugurating a two-day workshop on IMCI on Saturday.
He reiterated the unstinted support of the government for the programme and expressed the hope that it would produce the desired results through the efforts of all the concerned agencies.
He thanked the federal government and the WHO for initiating the programme in Sindh after undertaking pilot projects in Multan and Abbotabad.
Dr Ochani lamented that most of the deaths of children under the age of five were preventable and could be effectively checked through an integrated approach but a long and tedious process would need to be pursued with the teamwork of a good number of partners.
The workshop, organized by the ministry of health in collaboration with the WHO, was largely attended by senior officials of the health department and provincial programme managers and paediatricians.
Dr Zahid Larik, deputy director-general, ministry of health and national IMCI coordinator, stated that IMCI - a global strategy - was being practised in more than 100 countries to manage a child as a whole and not for a specific disease or problem.
He emphasized the fact that the IMCI was not another vertical programme and incorporated many of the elements of the programmes being implemented currently for the control of diarrhoeal diseases, acute respiratory infections, malaria, women’s health and improving the nutritional status of children.
He mentioned that the IMCI required effective coordination with the EPI, essential drugs programme and all other relevant programmes in order to significantly reduce the mortality and morbidity associated with the major causes of child diseases.
The programme would also contribute to healthy growth and development of children, improve case management skills of health workers, promote adaptation of standardized case on agreement guidelines, in-service and pre-service training and follow-up by improving the health system to deliver the IMCI.
Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi, WHO operation officer for Sindh, thanked the federal government for initiating the programme in Sindh immediately after the observance of the universal children’s day and expressed the hope that the government of Sindh would have no reservation in providing full ownership and support to the programme during its planning and implementation process.
He pointed out that most of the 11 million children died under the age of five globally every year were in the developing countries and it was our collective responsibility to effectively deal with the problem.
He stressed that the country could no longer afford disease- specific programmes, entailing a lot of wastage of scarce resources by duplication and lack of coordinated efforts. He urged the programme managers to looks beyond their respective spheres of activity and not only coordinate with each other but also work with agencies outside the health sector, such as rural water supply, population welfare, sanitation, etc.
Three working groups were also formed to discuss the issues relating to organizational and managerial structure, problems related to drugs and referral pathways besides monitoring and supervision.
It was decided to launch the programme in Nawabshah, which is a relatively peripheral district having a medical college and teaching hospital. Provincial and district level working groups were also constituted to plan and implement activities, prepare a PC-I for training activities.
Director-general health services, Sindh, Dr Qadir Bakhsh Qadwani, assured the participants that effective partnerships would be developed to reduce maternal mortality in the province from the present 85/1000 live births.—APP
