The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday summoned secretary health and director general of health Punjab for May 29 in a petition against the failure of government functionaries to control the outbreak of measles. The court remarked that lives of innocent children had been lost due to failure of the authorities and courts could not sit aloof in the situation.
The court observed that the government should take measures on war footing. Apparently the heath department failed to come up with appropriate and timely actions to control the epidemic. Earlier, petitioner's counsel Azhar Siddique argued that frequent deaths of the children was the outcome of low average vaccine administrated.
The petitioner pointed out that WHO was of the view that primary reasons identified for the measles outbreak and large number of deaths were low rate of routine vaccination in the field, poor health services management, and untrained staff at health facilities. Moreover, he said, there was also inability and incapacity of health personal in hospitals and in field to treat post measles complications such as pneumonia, post measles encephalitis and diarrhea.