LAHORE, May 27: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday summoned the Punjab health secretary and the health department director general to explain deaths from measles and failure of government functionaries to control the disease outbreak.

The court observed that lives of children had been lost due to failure of the authorities and courts could not stay aloof from the situation. The court said the government should take measures on a war footing instead of counting measles-related deaths.

Apparently, the health department had failed to come up with appropriate and timely action to control the epidemic.

Earlier, petitioner’s counsel argued that frequent deaths of children were the outcome of low ratio of vaccination of children in the country.

He quoted WHO as saying that primary reasons for measles outbreak and deaths were low rate of routine vaccination in the field, poor health services management and untrained staff at health facilities.

The counsel asked the court to take government authorities to the task for not discharging their responsibilities effectively.

The court summoned the health officials along with reports on May 29.