Daily Times

LAHORE: The Health Department to take concrete steps for the prevention and control of diseases especially dengue and provision of timely health cover to the flood affectees during the coming season.

The anti-polio activities should also be focused for ensuring affective control on the situation.

Primary and Secondary Health Secretary Punjab Ali Bahadur Qazi stated this while chairing the first formal departmental briefing session after assuming the charge as Primary & Secondary Health secretary on Saturday. He added that Primary and Secondary Health Department was directly related to the healthcare delivery services to the people.

Special Secretary Dr Faisal Zahoor, Health Services Director General Dr Munir Ahmed, Headquarters Director Dr Haroon Jehangir Khan, Technical Additional Secretary Dr Asim Altaf, senior officers of the department and directors of different health programmes were also present in the meeting.

DG Health Dr Munir Ahmed briefed that health delivery at primary and secondary level have been improved significantly for which DHQ and THQ hospitals have been strengthened besides improving the working of basic health units. He disclosed that after February, 2017 no polio case has been reported in the province and due to the affective measures taken by the department routine immunisation coverage has been reached up to 86 percent which was previous 50 percent.

He said that e-vaccination system has been introduced for monitoring the activities of vaccinators and due to which the attendance of vaccinators has reached up to 97 percent. He further informed that Punjab is the first province which has initially introduced Rota virus in six districts to prevent the children from watery diarrhea and now the scope of this vaccine has been expanded to all the districts.

The meeting was informed that arrangements are being finalised for the protection and provision of health cover to the flood affectees during the upcoming monsoon season. All necessary measures are being taken according to the SoPs and the sites for setting up medical relief camps in the traditionally flood affected districts have also been marked.

Moreover, 80,000 dozes of Anti-Snake Venom and 75,000 Anti-Rabies Vaccine are available in the stock whereas one million aqua-pura tablets for filtering the drinking water have been procured which would be distributed in the flood affected areas. Besides this, 500,000 packets of ORS have already been supplied to the districts whereas buffer stock of 500,000 ORS is also available in the department.

Dr Munir Ahmed informed the secretary that the Expanded Programme on Immunisation is very successfully being run in the province. He disclosed that every year, one million new-borns are included in the system.

While addressing the meeting, secretary Ali Bahadur Qazi appreciated that newly established primary & secondary health department have tremendously achieved a number of targets and remained successful in providing health facilities at primary and secondary level. He directed that all the procurements should timely be done to avoid any difficulty. He said that due to general elections activities, the issues related public health should not be ignored and special focus be given on the provision of medical cover to the flood affectees and to control dengue in the coming season.

Published in Daily Times, June 24^th 2018.