KARACHI: Regretting the country’s slow progress on childhood vaccination especially on the polio front despite massive government spending over the years, experts at the concluding day of a health seminar held on Monday called for concerted efforts to break the many myths surrounding vaccines, one of the most effective ways to prevent many serious illnesses.

They also warned about the high prevalence of antibiotic resistance resulting from the overuse and misuse of antibiotics and urged doctors to be cautious in their prescriptions.

Titled ‘The prevailing healthcare issues and opportunities in Pakistan’, the event was part of the Pakistan Women Festival. The session, ‘Paediatric care essentials in the 21st century’, was moderated by Dr Atif Mansoor.

Highlighting the significance of vaccines, Dr Anokhi Khanum said that they played an extremely important role in paediatric care and it is unfortunate that people were reluctant to get their children vaccinated, though vaccines were available free of cost in the country.

Vaccines, she said, had been a major medical breakthrough and there had been significant reduction in a number of diseases once their vaccines were developed.

“It’s a kind of human psyche that we don’t value things which are available for free. Still, there are serious issues related to an acute lack of awareness [of] vaccines and people have lots of misconceptions,” Dr Fareedudin, associated with the Indus Hospital, said.

Many people believed that only polio drops constituted the whole vaccination programme for a child. “And that’s because the government’s focus has only been on this crippling disease. Besides, we have seen that families have a problem going to a health facility for vaccination and they expect that they should be facilitated at their doorstep as is the practice in the case of anti-polio drive,” he noted, highlighting the factors behind low vaccination coverage.

Sharing his thoughts, Dr Sohail Thobani, a senior paediatrician, said: “It’s very shameful that we are leading the world in polio, though the disease has been eradicated in under-resourced African countries like Sudan and Ethiopia. It’s only Pakistan and Afghanistan which are struggling with the disease.”

According to him, the refusal rates in anti-polio campaigns in the DHA and Clifton are higher than Fata.

To a question, he said all vaccines in today’s age were manufactured synthetically and there was no haram content in them.

Overprescribing causing antibiotic resistance

On antibiotic resistance, experts said that most disease-causing germs were viruses and there were no medicines to treat them. “We are completely helpless (in case of a viral disease) and one has to wait for a week or so for recovery. Diarrhoea affecting children in 60 to 70 per cent cases is viral and improvement is seen within two to three days with good symptomatic treatment,” Dr Fareedudin observed.

He, however, lamented that often such patients were prescribed antibiotics that could complicate the case and tend to increase the patient’s vulnerability to antibiotic resistance.

“The severity of the issue can be gauged from the fact that we found 80 to 90 neonates having resistance towards certain antibiotics during analysis at a small healthcare facility,” added Dr Khanum.

Replying to a question about children not having proper meals and reducing weight with no obvious reason, Dr Thobani said often children were offered sweets or food high in sugar, which suppressed hunger.

“We need to find out the root cause behind such behaviour. One reason could be beating of the child, an abuse accepted as normal in our society. A child should be treated as an adult and deserves the same respect which we would like for ourselves,” he said.

Experts were of the opinion that the use of clean water, availability of proper sanitation and good hygiene practices like regular hand-washing prevented many diseases including diarrhoea.

The discussion was followed by a session on oral hygiene. Dr Sidra Khan acted as the moderator whereas Dr Babur Ashraf, Dr Wajeeha Rehman and Dr Javeria Qureshi were the panellists.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2017