Sindh to celebrate mother and child week from Monday

Sindh Health Department and National program for Family Planning have finalised all arrangements to celebrate Mother and Child Week in 11 districts of Sindh including Tharparkar, Umerkot, Badin, Tando Allahyar, Jamshoro, Nawabshah, Larkana, Kambar, Ghotki, Shikarpur and Kashmore from April 6 to 11.
Health department officials told APP on Friday that the week will be focused on awareness campaign with purposeful service delivery in 11 districts reaching around 12 million population, 1.8 million children under-five and 0.41 million pregnant women.
About 7,000 Lady Health Workers will be involved in the activity together with vaccinators, health care providers and volunteers. The series of activities during the week would include public awareness activities at village and union council level, supplemented by immunisation for children, tetanus toxoid vaccination for pregnant mothers, refresher training for health workers and strengthened public health systems. Efficient public health systems will particularly ensure that Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) and other essential supplies are available and correctly used.
Each pregnant woman will also receive counselling on recognition of danger signs among mothers and new-borns, the importance of at least four ANC visits, delivery by a skilled birth attendant, post natal care, early initiation of breast feeding, exclusive breast feeding, immunisation of the child and optimal birth spacing.
This is one of the key initiatives by Department of Health, this year in 11 districts of Sindh with focused awareness and service delivery on Maternal, New born and Child Health Care, said Dr Abdul Majid. The week will also focus on diarrhoea prevention and its management with an intensive awareness raising on best care practice at the household level if a child suffers from diarrhoea.
These include the use of ORS, continued breast-feeding and knowledge about danger signs of dehydration when a prompt referral to a health facility is required. Simple measures such as treating drinking water and hand washing with soap can prevent diarrhoea and other communicable diseases. Similarly low cost latrines can be built where people lack proper sanitation facilities.
Departments of Social Welfare, Education and Local Government are partnering with Department of Health to spread the message of hand washing and proper sanitation practice. Department of Population Welfare is also partnering at district level to spread the messages of maternal and child health through their outlets.
The Mother and Child Week was piloted in and district of Sindh (Tando Allahyar) in 2008 with a focus on prevention of diarrhoea in April and prevention and management of Pneumonia in October with excellent results and hence being scaled up now.
The week holds particular relevance to our country where each year witnesses preventable deaths of 432,000 children under-five and 20,000 mothers due to causes related to pregnancy and child birth. Among the under-five deaths, two-thirds are in the new-born period (first 28 days of life) and the remaining are largely due to pneumonia (13 per cent) and diarrhoea (11 per cent).