KARACHI, May 27: The government would allocate a considerable sum for social sector development in the forthcoming budget with particular emphasis on education, health and community betterment, said the chairman of Senate, Mohammad mian Soomro, on Thursday.

He was addressing the launching ceremony of the Safe Water Council, held under the aegis of Pakistan Medical Association, Johns Hopkins University's Blooms berg School of Public Health, Population Services International and P&G Health Sciences Institute.

Several government functionaries involved in water conservation strategies, healthcare professionals as well as medical researchers and representatives of international bodies engaged in public health also spoke on the occasion.

In his speech, Mr Soomro said exposed to a fast depletion of water resources and a sharp increase in cases of contamination, Pakistan should adopt a pragmatic approach, involving reduction in population growth, decrease in wastage of water and cost-effective treatment of the same.

"(The) thrust is very rightly on care and preventive aspects as cure is expensive - beyond the reach of many," he observed. The senator maintained that the government was fully conscious of its role and could not be absolved of its responsibilities to provide clean air, clean water and quality healthcare to the masses.

However, in view of the ground realities close public-private partnership had to be strengthened with maximum involvement of the masses themselves. Joint efforts, he said, was required with the provision of maximum participation of the masses in issues directly linked to them.

Mr Soomro said the country experienced frequent bouts of water shortage. It also ranked among some of the countries reporting more and more cases of water-borne diseases, with particular reference to cholera and gastro-enteritis which could be cited as an outcome of poor infrastructure as well as negligible level of comprehension among the people about prevention.

The senator suggested that a strategy focussing on womenfolk be initiated as they were responsible for the healthcare of their family members. According to him, the issue of low income and poor health standards were inter-linked and efforts to adopt simple but efficient techniques to prevent communicable diseases through cost-effective measures could consolidate the governmental efforts towards a wide range of other development programmes - directly linked to up-gradation of the social sector of the country with particularly reference to education and health.

Earlier, Secretary-General of the Pakistan Medical Association, Dr Shershah Syed, said water-induced diarrhoea episodes led to an estimated 250,000 deaths among children each year.

Seventy-seven per cent of the Pakistani households were said to have no tradition of water treatment while those that went for it included eight per cent who preferred to boil water, nine per cent who filtered the same, followed by two per cent who applied other disinfectants and two per cent who used bottled water.

Mentioning that the efficiency of the interventions were yet to be assessed, he claimed that 62 per cent of the urban population and 84 per cent of the rural population were not at all worried about water treatment.

He referred to the WHO estimates, according to which, safe water reduced diarrhoea and other enteric diseases by six per cent to 50 per cent even in the absence of improved health education.

Chairperson of the Health Oriented Preventive Education (HOPE), Dr Mobina Agboatwala, said the scenario witnessed in Karachi was much grimmer than those obtaining in the other parts of the country.

In Karachi 10 per cent of the children died before their fifth birthday (40 per cent from diarrhoea and 13 per cent from acute respiratory disease while 40 per cent who survived were malnourished. -APP