The management of Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) Jamshoro, in collaboration with Sindh Doctors Association, has established a special unit of Nutritional Rehabilitation in its Pediatric Department. The cell will be focussed at managing and treating around 1.3 million children, from Hyderabad and interior Sindh, suffering from severe malnutrition.
LUMHS Pediatric Unit Chairperson Dr Salma Shaikh talking to newsmen here on Friday said the special unit would provide both preventive and curative services along with treatment to the severely malnourished children. The special unit had been established with meager resources on small scale in Jamshoro with the doctors, who were properly trained in standard treatment protocol, she said.
"Though we faced many problems and this small unit seemed very inadequate keeping in mind the figure of 1.3 million children with sever malnutrition, but when we thought, both enthusiasm and pessimism are contagious, so which one do we want to spread," she said.
Elaborating the plan to run this special unit in an effective manner, Dr Salma said efforts would be made to improve population awareness regarding nutritional requirements by nutritional counselling of mothers. People were said to be also sensitised about relevance of improved hygiene and sanitation besides improving their knowledge, attitude and practices aimed at improving nutrition.
Healthcare providers, she said, would be trained as how to treat severely malnourished children by providing free medical treatment and food, both in accordance to standard diet and special diet recommended by WHO. She said a baseline survey in Jamshoro Colony would also be conducted to see whether health education improved long-term outcome in form of improved nutritional status.
A pilot project in Jamshoro Colony had been started where the doctors would meet parents at their homes for health education to improve the nutritional status of children with mild and moderate malnutrition, she said.
She maintained that investment in child health paid great dividends in form of a healthy growing nation and it had been proved scientifically that growth retardation early in life affected the physical, mental and emotional health of a person. She referred to recent statistics of Unicef for Pakistan showing that 72 million citizens of the country were below 18 years and there were nearly 21 million who were under five.
The mortality rate among under five years children in Pakistan was 90/1,000 as compared to 5/1,000 in United Kingdom, she said. About growing incidence of malnutrition among the children in the country, she said it was because of number of social and medical reasons but the common ones included poor breast feeding practices.
Repeated infections especially pneumonia and diarrhea, delayed and improper weaning, lack of family planning and large family size and poverty were said to be among the other major causes of malnutrition among children in the country. The most important reason of all these factors was lack of education as literacy rate among the female of the country was only 36 percent, she said.
LUMHS Pediatrics Department's Head said that 10 million children died each year in the world with 70 to 80 percent deaths in developing countries. Malnutrition contributed to more than 50 percent of their deaths, she said, adding that combination of malnutrition and infection was the commonest cause of death in the countries like Pakistan as one led to other.
She informed that more than half a million children died from pneumonia and diarrhea in Pakistan and the main cause was underlying malnutrition. She said 60 to 70 percent children admitted in hospitals were malnourished and they were treated in general pediatric wards. She hoped that special unit in pediatric department of the university would help in minimising the mortality rate among the children under five years.