‘Foreign teams create language barriers’
WHO’s Dr Seri is not happy with the pace of polio, tuberculosis campaigns.
KARACHI:
The World Health Organisation (WHO) brought its teams to supervise campaigns to prevent polio and tuberculosis in the city but it believes there is still a long way to go.
“The non-local teams were creating language barriers, which are unacceptable to the local communities,” said WHO representative Dr Muhammad Seri. “The inefficient follow-up work has caused failure to achieve the required results.”
He was addressing a session of the district coordination committee, led by Karachi DCO Muhammad Hussain Syed, on Thursday. Dr Seri believed that the teams, selected by the WHO to supervise the campaigns, need to improve and the authorities must ensure that enough teams are available for different towns.
The volatile law and order situation in certain towns — Orangi, Saddar, Keamari, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, SITE and Shah Faisal — has also affected the eradication campaigns, he admitted. Although the city itself has not reported any polio cases yet, most reports were received from migrants from across the country.
Health DO Dr Amanullah, who looks after the tuberculosis control programme, said that private hospitals do not exchange data with the government on polio and tuberculosis. This gap has to be filled and private hospitals should realise that it is a national task to address patients suffering from these two diseases, he said. By the year 2015, tuberculosis will be controlled by 50 per cent and by 2050, it will be overcome completely.
Dr Amanullah said Dow University Ojha Campus and the Indus Hospital have Multi-Drug Resistance units under a pilot project. The patients need to be educated that they should complete their treatment or else their disease will become drug-resistant and then the treatment cost will run into the millions of rupees, he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2011.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) brought its teams to supervise campaigns to prevent polio and tuberculosis in the city but it believes there is still a long way to go.
“The non-local teams were creating language barriers, which are unacceptable to the local communities,” said WHO representative Dr Muhammad Seri. “The inefficient follow-up work has caused failure to achieve the required results.”
He was addressing a session of the district coordination committee, led by Karachi DCO Muhammad Hussain Syed, on Thursday. Dr Seri believed that the teams, selected by the WHO to supervise the campaigns, need to improve and the authorities must ensure that enough teams are available for different towns.
The volatile law and order situation in certain towns — Orangi, Saddar, Keamari, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, SITE and Shah Faisal — has also affected the eradication campaigns, he admitted. Although the city itself has not reported any polio cases yet, most reports were received from migrants from across the country.
Health DO Dr Amanullah, who looks after the tuberculosis control programme, said that private hospitals do not exchange data with the government on polio and tuberculosis. This gap has to be filled and private hospitals should realise that it is a national task to address patients suffering from these two diseases, he said. By the year 2015, tuberculosis will be controlled by 50 per cent and by 2050, it will be overcome completely.
Dr Amanullah said Dow University Ojha Campus and the Indus Hospital have Multi-Drug Resistance units under a pilot project. The patients need to be educated that they should complete their treatment or else their disease will become drug-resistant and then the treatment cost will run into the millions of rupees, he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2011.