PESHAWAR: Incentives planned to reduce infant, maternal deaths
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, June 9: Free cooking oil will be offered as an incentive to women who attend government clinics for maternity -related monitoring, in a move to reduce the high maternal and infant mortality rate in the NWFP
, doctors, lady health workers and nurses who will be treating the women were told at a workshop on Wednesday.
Medical personnel from seven NWFP districts including Bannu, Battagram, Kohistan, Swat, Mansehra, and Upper and Lower Dir also attended the workshop on safe reproductive health practices at the one-day workshop organised by the World Health Organisation at the Khyber Teaching Hospital where the World Food Program is assisting the health department with the provision of free vegetable oil to women attending the ante and post-natal treatment clinics.
Dr Fayyaz Ali said that theWFP had been providing assistance to the health department in the field of reproductive health, safe motherhood and family planning services.
About 550 metric tons of vegetable oil would be provided by the world food agency to be distributed among pregnant women visiting the hospitals, BHUs and RHCs of NWFP.
He told the participants to ensure at least four visits of the pregnant women to the health facilities in order to enable the doctors and health workers to provide them with special instructions.
First, he said the visit should take place in the initial four months to be followed by visits in fifth, sixth and seventh month respectively. According to him, the health workers should focus on educating the mothers about protective measures during pregnancy and asked the participants to ensure that all the children below the age of five years get vaccinated.
Dr Ali urged the participants to advise every mother to wash their hands while handling their children. The mothers, he added should breastfeed their infants as it protected the children against a host of ailments and strengthened their immunity against diseases.
Every women visiting health facilities in the selected districts would be given two kilograms of vegetable oil free of cost. The step was aimed at giving incentives to the women of these backward districts to visit the local health facilities.
On the occasion WFP's Dr Saleem Akhtar, said that his organisation accorded top priority to the health of the pregnant women and infants. He urged the participants to educate the pregnant women regarding their intake and inform them about the safety measures to be adopted during pregnancy.
He said that the malnourished women were destined to produce weak children and emphasises should be laid on the better food for the mothers. Dr Said Akbar Khan, WHO's Peshawar-based Operation Medical Officer, was of the view that women visiting the health facilities should also be educated on matters pertaining to family planning.
They should be sensitised about the health of their children, he added. According to him, mothers should be briefed about the importance of the vaccination of their children. They should be advised to adopt hygienic measures to save their infants from diarrhoea, dysentery and other childhood diseases.
