LAHORE, Nov 14: ‘Mother and Child Health Week’ will be observed across the province from Thursday (today) and in Lahore from 19th.

This was stated by Special Assistant to Chief Minister Khwaja Salman Rafiq while talking to the media at a local hotel on Wednesday.

He said the government was taking steps to reduce maternal mortality rate under the Millennium Development Goal-4 (MDG) and to solve the mother and child health-related problems.

He said after successful control over dengue, the next target of the government was to improve routine immunisation programme and to minimise mortality rate in new-born babies and pregnant women.

Khwaja Salman said the community should come forward to create awareness among the masses as it did against dengue.

On the occasion, National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Health Provincial Coordinator Dr Akhtar Rashid said during the week, 49,000 lady health workers and 5,000 other community workers would participate. Moreover, he said lady health workers would visit rural as well as suburban areas of the cities and convey door-to-door health message to household women.

He said anti-worm tablets would be distributed among seven million children of two to five years of age. Lady health workers would give these tablets to the children to ensure their proper growth.

Similarly, the 600,000 children who remained deprived due to some reasons would be administered preventive injections.

Dr Akhtar Rashid said the theme of the week was “prevention against pneumonia” and the injections of newly-introduced pneumococcal vaccine in EPI programme would also be administered to new-born children.

He said the main cause of childhood mortality was diarrhoea and lady health workers would visit door to door to apprise the families of the benefits of hand washing and formulation of ORS.

“During the week, one million pregnant women will be given TT-I and TT-II doses, besides folic acid tablets,” he said. They would also be sensitised about the importance of balanced diet.

He said flood-hit districts of Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur had been specially focused, where special mosquito nets and folic acid tablets would be provided to women besides special energy biscuits to children. He said only hand washing habit could prevent from a number of diseases.