City Naib Nazim Tariq Hassan on Tuesday launched the 'Sehat-o-Safai programme' at Liaquat National Hospital aimed at inculcating healthy and hygienic habits in the society on the whole.
The eight-month long programme was launched by the Infectious Diseases Society of Pakistan (IDSP) to educate schoolchildren about the importance of basic health and hygiene.
The programme would cover about 1.5 million schoolchildren aged between 5 to 11 years belonging to all socio-economic classes and over 6,500 schools will be visited in all major cities of the country.
Leading health practitioners will conduct 40-minute interactive tutorial sessions in classes and materials including a cartoon video and booklets for schoolchildren would also be shown.
The Naib Nazim assured city government's full support and emphasised on the importance of Sehat-o-Safai.
IDSP general-secretary Dr Altaf Ahmed outlined factors responsible for spread of infectious diseases.
He said urban migration with crowding and improper sewage disposal causes the exchange of antibiotic-resistant organisms between people and the exchange of resistance genes among bacteria, thereby, increasing the prevalence of resistant strains.
He suggested potable water, well-ventilated housing and proper waste disposal as well as proper hand washing with good quality soap preferably with antibacterial activity would reduce infections.
IDSP President Dr Naseem Salahuddin spoke about the prevention of infections and said infectious diseases were preventable and in most cases were treatable.
"We just need to have clean sensible personal habits with a measure of civic sense to be able to practice hygienic measures in our daily lives," she added.
Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) secretary-general Dr Shershah Syed extended PMA's full support to Sehat-o-Safai campaign for creating awareness on the need for good hygiene among the people.
"One obvious reason for this high prevalence of communicable diseases in our society is the lack of proper hygiene practices of which an extremely effective and simple method is hand washing known to interrupt many infectious cycles and termed as the single most important means of preventing the spread of infection by US Centres of Disease Control," he added.
Dr Arshad Altaf of Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) highlighted the impact of hand washing and its relation to the reduction in diarrhoeal diseases in children.
He said globally an average of 5,000 children die daily due to diarrhoea, adding that hand washing promotion is effective in preventing diarrhoea among vulnerable children.
"Although hand washing can prevent this, children, mostly at risk, are too young to wash their own hands, he said, adding that results of one year study have revealed that hand washing with soap markedly reduce diarrhoea (53 percent lower incidence), despite a highly contaminated environment, highly contaminated wash water and without clean towels," he added.
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