Civil society taken on board for health drive

CHITRAL, Nov 29: As Chitral is facing an acute shortage of health-care facilities, a meeting here on Thursday was informed that the civil society would also be involved in a weekly campaign being launched for the well-being of mothers and newborn children. The meeting was held to review the arrangements made for the upcoming ‘mother and child week’ to be observed from December 3. The participants were informed that the decision to involve the civil society had been taken in order to achieve the target. The meeting chaired by DCO Rahmatullah Wazir was attended by E.D.O. (health) Dr. Saad Maluk, medical superintendent of DHQ hospital Dr. Noorul Islam and representatives of different civil society organizations. The participants stressed the importance of the campaign. Dr. Ibrahim Khan, the district coordinator of the National Programme on Family Planning and Basic Health, said the four-pronged campaign was aimed at vaccinating those children aged between two to four who had been left due to one reason or the other. He said that the other aims were to provide deworming tablets to the children between two and five years of age, vaccinating expecting women against tetanus and besides disseminating knowledge of health and hygiene to the rural people. He said that all the medicines and other materials have been transported to the health centres in all the twenty four union councils of the district and supervisory staff appointed to carry out the campaign. The other speakers said that awareness about hygiene and basic health can ward off many diseases from the people and during the week-long campaign the targeted people should be approached.–Zahiruddin]]>