PESHAWAR, May 6: Doctors in Mansehra and Battagram districts have been imparted training on how to tackle diseases surfacing after an earthquake. The World Health Organisation, which sponsored these workshops , has asked doctors of the two districts to maintain a proper record of diseases in their respective health facilities so they could predict major outbreaks.

"We conducted two workshops on Disease Early Warning System (DEWS) in Mansehra and Battagram districts from April 26 to 28, which had been hit by an earthquake on Feb 14 that had killed 20 people," said Dr Quaid Seed, WHO's Emergency Medical Officer.

The WHO had sent a fact-finding mission to these regions in February to assess the damage caused and the health problems emerging. In the light of this assessment, the Australian government announced giving Rs1.8 million to the world body for distribution of medicine among people who had contracted diseases in the aftermath of the earthquake, he said.

The drugs have been handed over to health EDOs of the two districts for distribution among the victims, he added. During the workshops, the health professionals were given training on drug storage, dispensing and prescription handling.

The special training was meant to tackle diseases caused by mass population movements due to earthquakes. He said the purpose of the workshops was to enhance the capacity of local health practitioners to timely predict health emergencies and take remedial actions before they could take the shape of a disaster.

The future role of doctors in monitoring the trends of diseases in their catchment areas was also debated. The workshop participants were asked to maintain Disease Early Warning weekly chart, record of patients with their diseases on a daily basis and booklets on case definitions, management and prevention of infectious diseases.

According to the WHO officials, the district Nazim of Battagram informed the workshop that there had been an exceptional rise in the incidence of dog-bites and rabies but anti-rabies vaccines weren't available.