A two-day international conference on 'Paediatric Infectious Diseases', concluded here on Sunday with the recommendation that adequate financial resources must be allocated for ensuring control of infectious diseases among children.
After two days deliberations, the delegates also stressed the need for an intensive public awareness campaign on mass media about the diseases among the children. The delegates recommended for a robust disease surveillance system for all infectious diseases, mainly learning and building on the experience of combating polio in the country.
The delegates suggested that national strategy addressing neonatal and child health must integrate paediatric infectious diseases control strategy in their planning with involvement of health experts.
The conference, in which around 500 delegates participated, strongly demanded that a debate should be initiated on new vaccine and other similar interventions to contain and combat paediatric infections which are claiming around 80 percent of total deaths of the children below two years of age.
On the second day of the conference, which was organised in collaboration of Pakistan Paediatric Association and Infectious Disease Group, various technical sessions were held. On the concluding session, Dr Ashraf Sultan, chairman of the organising committee and President Pakistan Paediatric Association (PPA) thanked the participants, especially Dr Chok Wan Chan and hoped that such conferences would lend a strong hand in reducing the child mortality in third world.
Professor S.M. Haneef, Professor Abdul Hameed president PPA, Professor M.A. Arif general secretary PPA and Professor Mohammed Asghar Butt, president PPA Punjab and other speakers including eminent paediatric consultants also read out their research papers.