HYDERABAD, Nov 5: DCO Ali Ahmed Loond has appealed to the provincial government to establish a laboratory in the district for the diagnosis of hepatitis.

He said at a meeting on precautionary measures to combat the killer disease and its treatment that it was extremely necessary to create awareness among people, especially those living in rural areas and katchi abadis, about the killer disease.

He said that the print and electronic media could play a key role in creating awareness among people against hepatitis and informed the meeting that the district government was already providing medical treatment to more than 1,300 patients of hepatitis.

The meeting formed a taskforce, which was directed to submit its recommendations within 15 days to streamline procedure for the diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis patients.

Dr Zulfiqar Ali who represented the federal government, Dr Mumtaz who represented the provincial government, EDO of health Dr Bux Ali Pitafi and a number of officials of the health department attended the meeting.

SIDA MD: The newly-appointed managing director of the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (Sida), Ghulam Abbas Laghari, has called upon growers as well as people at large to help conserve water.

The MD visited different sections of Sida secretariat and held introductory meeting with the staff in which he said that efforts would be made to conserve water because Sindh faced acute shortage of this precious commodity.

The only recourse to meet this shortage and increase productivity was to avoid wastage of water, Mr Leghari said.