October 09, 2008	Thursday	Shawwal 9, 1429

KARACHI, Oct 8: Participants of a consultative workshop on mothers, newborns and children health on Wednesday called for prioritizing the relevant interventions to achieve the targets set for the survival of women and infants in the country under the Million Development Goals.

Speakers belonging to NGOs and government health organizations noted that despite the passage of considerable time many of the goals, improving access to high quality mother-child health and family planning services, building of strategic partnerships among public sector organizations, NGOs and private sector institutions, training of health workers and capacity building of organizations were not being pursued as per the requirements.

The workshop on ‘Strategic analysis and investment needs for MDGs 4 and 5’ was organised by Unicef (Pakistan), with federal health secretary Suleman Ghani in the chair.

Through presentations the stakeholders were informed about the different interventions being tried to reduce maternal, newborn and child morbidity and mortality in the country, with a countdown to 2015.

It was said that the under-five mortality rate was 92 per 1,000 live births, while the infant mortality rate remained 78 per 1,000 live births against a neonatal mortality rate of 54 per 100,000 live births in the country in 2006-07. The maternal mortality rate was 320 per 100,000 live births in 2005.

It was noted by the participants that bottlenecks that prevented scaling-up of essential MNCH interventions included under-funding of preventive care, non-inclusion of potential high-impact interventions in national policies, pneumococcal vaccines, food supplementation in pregnancy, sporadic access during campaigns and difficulties in reaching the villages left out, weak training support of community promoters, inadequate and non-specific communication for behavior changes among the individuals and the communities.

In regard to the baseline coverage of interventions, it was said that 50 per cent of the households had the availability of soap for hand washing, 59 per cent of the population was covered by lady health workers for family preventive measures, 41 per cent of the mothers washed hands at least after going to toilet, 10 per cent of the districts were with sufficient stocks of Clean delivery kits in the last six months, five per cent of the pregnant women received CDKs, while three per cent of the women used CDK at in their last delivery, 55 per cent of the children between 20 and 23 months were receiving continued breastfeeding till two years of age, 37 per cent of children under six-month of age were exclusively being breastfed with no water or other fluids, 30 per cent of currently married women (15-49) used conventional contraceptive methods, two per cent of the HIV-positive women were receiving a complete course of ARV prophylaxis to reduce mother-to-child transmission of the virus.

In regard to preventive infant and child care, the participants were told that 93 per cent of the union councils had a fixed EPI centre, 32 per cent of the lady health workers were trained in immunisation, 80 per cent of the children (12-23 months) were receiving BCG, while 56 per cent of the children (0-23 months) were receiving DPT 1, 2 and 3, while 47 per cent of the children were fully immunised as far as all basic vaccines were concerned.

There was an agreement among the participants that only the internationally recognized high-impact interventions matching the local needs and resources, performance-based programming and budgeting, improved training of health workers and improved coverage of interventions would be the keys to successful addressing of health issues related to children and mothers.

The federal secretary remarked that despite efforts figures and data related to the health sector remained discouraging, calling for a soul-searching as well.

He also stressed the need for effective utilisation of lady health workers and basic health units and increased partnerships at all levels.