PESHAWAR, Aug 24: Senior doctors at the inaugural session of the seven-day workshop here on Sunday extolled the medical students to learn more about the community health to be able to serve the underprivileged people in society.

The session of the workshop was organised by the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association (IFMSA).

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Anthony Radford of Adelaide, South Australia, said: “In less developed countries of the world about 80 per cent of the people live in rural areas, who have been facing enormous hardships regarding their treatment as only a few students in most of the medical colleges wish to undertake their training in community and rural settings.”

He said between 30 and 50 per cent of the children in less developed countries were malnourished.

Those with first degree of malnutrition had double the death rate than those who were adequately nourished, he said. Furthermore, those with second degree malnutrition had three times the death rate and those with third degree malnutrition 11 times the death rate than adequately nourished children, he added.

These unfortunate countries had infant mortality rates from 30 to over 100 per 1,000 live births and maternal mortality rates of 100 to over 1,000 per 100,000 deliveries, said Prof Radford. Such scant health-care scenarios, he emphasised, demanded of the medical professionals to concentrate on community health and come out from the four walls of the hospitals to serve the hapless masses.

“Even being doctors, most of them do not, or know very little, about healthy life styles or how to maintain health and about disease prevention and educating the people and patients about their health and precautionary measures required for good health,” he further said.

“In fact, I want the medical students to come face to face with those who are suffering most illnesses and premature deaths, such as, the poor and disadvantaged, and determine why that is so and how their illness and disease patterns and their premature death rates are related to their socio-economic status,” Prof Radford stressed.

He urged the students to get exposed to these sorry happenings and explore the possibilities to carve out solutions as to what could be done to improve the situation at the community level.

Acting Principal of the Khyber Medical College, Prof Dr Siddiqur Rehman, said ailments such as tuberculosis and cholera were re-emerging in the NWFP because of the huge influx of Afghan refugees.