The Director General Provincial Health Department Hyderabad Abdul Sattar Korai has said that Pakistan was committed to achieve measles elimination status by 2010 under the joint strategy with World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations International Childrens Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
This he said while addressing the last session of two-day workshop on measles elimination held at his directorate on Friday. Addressing the participants, Korai said that Pakistan endorsed the measles mortality reduction goal set at UN special session on children in May 2002 and World Health Assembly in 2003. He said that goal is to make sustainable reduction in annual measles death by 50 percent before end of 2006 compared to 1999 estimates.
He said that as the part of on-going strategy to achieve the goal for measles elimination by 2010, government of Pakistan through E.P.I. programme has successfully conducted a nation-wide measles catch-up campaign from 2007-2008. However, he said that the objectives could be achieved successfully through sincere and concerted efforts of all health managers, policy makers, thousands of vaccinators and volunteers and of course enthusiastic participation of the parents as well as sections of community.
He said that measles is one of leading cause of childhood morbidity and mortality among vaccine preventable diseases in the world and added that one quarter of our children still remain without protection against measles. He said that Federal EPI with the support from WHO has arranged to confirm each and every suspected measles case by laboratory investigation through National Measles Laboratory in Islamabad with free of cost.
The Director General Health also informed that District and Taluka wise measles diagnostic centres were also being established in the province where blood samples of suspected children would be collected and sent to National Institute of Health Islamabad for confirmation. However, he appealed all the stakeholders individuals and organisations to come forward and help the government in its campaign launched for elimination of measles from the country.
The Project Director EPI Dr Mazhar Khamisani, Director Monitoring National Institute of Health Islamabad Dr Qadir Bux Abbasi, Dr Qamar-ul-Hassan from WHO Islamabad and other also spoke on this occasion. The EDOs of different districts and Master Trainers EPI attended the workshop.
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