KARACHI, Feb 15: The provincial and district health officials on Tuesday resolved for integrated efforts to reduce mortality rate of children less than five years of age in Sindh , as a number of children died of treatable and preventable diseases due to lack of proper health care units and trained manpower.

An orientation and planning meeting of health authorities in the province was organized by Paediatric Unit-III, Civil Hospital, Karachi, with the collaboration of UNICEF and WHO-Sindh, at a local hotel on Tuesday.

The meeting discussed the possibilities for initiation of Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) and recommended establishment of provincial and district IMCI cells.

According to discussants of the meeting, about 545,000 babies under five years of age died due to preventable and treatable diseases every year in the country. The problem aggravated due to absence of timely and proper handling of the cases. Non-accessibility to health facilities and lack of confidence in the staff available were also points to ponder.

The four districts of Sindh which have been earmarked for child survival and development (DSD) activities are Karachi (Partially), Hyderabad, Sanghar and Nawabshah.

The meeting, attended by EDOs (Health), THOs, medical superintendents from various districts, called for strengthening the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness in Sindh. They discussed the issues like selection of focal persons, identification of health facilities with maternal health care centres, and training of paramedics.

Inaugurating the meeting, Secretary Health Prof Noshad Ahmad Shaikh regretted over the high morbidity and mortality of children and accentuated the need for childhood illness management strategies as well. He urged the donor agencies, including the UNICEF and the WHO, to extend further support for the important national issue.

He said that any positive trend in the child survival rate could be possible only after the health officers had developed a workable monitoring strategy and ensured the training of field and other relevant staff.

Prof Iqbal Ahmad Memon, the provincial coordinator of IMCI/CSD, talked about the child health development situation and gave figures of childhood illness and mortality in the country. He said that 80,000 babies with maximum age of seven days died every year in the country and 160,000 babies died annually in first three weeks.

He said that acute respiratory infections (mostly pneumonia), diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, vaccine preventable (measles), malaria, and neonatal conditions were the common factors for the growing mortality rate in children.

Prof Iqbal Ahmed observed that sick children were not properly assessed and treated by pharmacists and doctors in hospitals and health centres and as such there created a room for IMCI pre-service training, early involvement of academia and partnership between the health ministries as well as educational and trainings institutes.

Dr Captain Mir Mohammad Shaikh and Dr Qazi Mujtaba Kamal urged the participants of the orientation meeting to work intensively and sincerely for comprehensive planning and to chalk out a proper outline with the input from the field so that implementation of IMCI or CSD programmes could yield the desired result.

"Our target should be to reduce mortality and have stronger essential drugs and community involvement with improved health seeking behaviours so that major killers could be contained effectively and our children do not die of treatable and preventable diseases," they said.

Among others, Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi, Dr Nandlal Moorpani, Dr Imtiaz Mahar also spoke on the occasion. The IMCI system in Sindh emphasized for identification of health facilities, training of health staff at district level jointly by district and provincial master trainers, provision of required logistics, medicines, vaccines at each IMCI health facility, monitoring of IMCI health facilities by districts and provincial cells, periodic meetings of both districts and provincial cells to review the related progress.