KARACHI: Awareness of infectious diseases stressed
KARACHI, Dec 21: City Nazim Niamatullah Khan on Tuesday underlined the need to launch a campaign to create awareness of infectious diseases to help save precious lives.
"A comprehensive and full-fledged campaign targeting the whole city in general and slum areas in particular will help prevent spread of infectious diseases," he said.
Speaking at the inaugural session of the 5th International Conference organized by the Infection Control Society Pakistan (ICSP), the nazim called for organizing awareness seminars and programmes in poor localities of the city instead of big hotels in posh areas.
"The dwellers of slum areas need more awareness of these diseases due to low level of literacy and unhygienic conditions prevailing there." He said there were 538 notified kutchi abadis in Karachi, having over half of the total population of city. These areas required more attention and aggressive efforts to get the people aware of infectious diseases and prevention methods.
Mr Khan said the level of unawareness could be gauged from the fact that people of poor localities even did not know the names of infectious diseases. Highlighting the importance of Karachi, he said, being the biggest city of the country, it contributed 70 per cent revenue to the national exchequer and it had 70 per cent of the total industries of the country.
"A healthy Karachi will benefit the whole country as people from all corners of Pakistan come here in search of employment," he said and remarked that "Pakistan will not be safe until Karachi is safe".
He pledged that the city government would extend all possible cooperation to any organization willing to work for the betterment of the city people and called for coordination between government departments and private organization in this regard.
Dr M. Rafiq Khanani, president of the ICSP, said infectious diseases accounted for over 75 per cent of morbidity and mortality in Pakistan, of which at least 50 per cent were preventable.
"Pakistan currently has the fourth highest global burden of childhood deaths. About 100,000 to 150,000 of these deaths are due to diarrhoeal diseases," he said.
Pakistan ranks 6th among the high tuberculosis burden countries with about 250,000 cases and over 60,000 deaths annually. The burden of hepatitis B and C is estimated at 12 to 15 per cent of the population that translates into 15 million to 20 million carriers in the country.
Malaria, typhoid, tetanus, cholera, Lleishmaniasis, skin and wound infections, pneumonias, UTIs and post-operative infections also contribute significantly to the health system of the country.
Dr Rafiq said the ICSP was seeking support from national and international organizations to achieve its goal of prevention of infectious diseases in the shortest possible time.
He hoped that all the segments of society would realise importance of preventive health and adopt appropriate infection control practices. Later, talking to newsmen, the city nazim said the OPD facility at Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases would open by the end of January.
Besides, eight chest pain centres were also being established in different towns of the city to give emergency first aid treatment to patients suffering from cardiac diseases.
The Sindh secretary for health, Dr Naushad Sheikh, said that so far 15 to 20 blood banks had been registered as part of the government's efforts for transmission of safe and screened blood.
TRANSPARENCY: City Nazim NIamatullah Khan has said special attention is being paid to ensure transparency in working of the city government, saying that positive results have been achieved as savings have been made in development projects.
Speaking at a dinner hosted in honour of delegates of Transparency International (TI) on Monday night, he said PC-1 of one project was estimated at Rs250 million by consultants and officials.
"When the file of the said project was submitted to me, I formed a committee to review the PC-1 cost to ensure transparency," he said, adding that the contract was given at Rs60 million instead of Rs250 million when tenders were invited on the basis of the committee's report.
Delegates from Sri Lanka, Nepal, India and other countries attended the meeting. Regional Manager of the TI for Asia Peter Rooke also spoke. - PPI
