‘Focus needs to be on mothers and newborns’

Gynaecology workshop held at General Hospital.

LAHORE:

Facilities for mother and child health at basic health units’ level need to be focused on in order to save women from complications during pregnancy. Gynaecology and child health specialists must be appointed at the village level so that healthcare facilities provided by the government can be used for the welfare of the masses.

These recommendations were made by the Post Graduate Medical Institute Principal Anjum Habib Vohra while addressing the participants of a gynaecology training workshop at the Lahore General Hospital (LGH) in connection with a two-day Scientific Symposium to be held on January 30 and 31. Prof Dr Muhammad Aslam, Prof Shaheena Asif, Prof Farrukh Zaman, Prof Nuzhat Khawaja, Prof Shamsa Humayun and Dr Mamoona Ashraf delivered lectures on the subject of child and mother health. PGMI faculty members, gynaecologists and other doctors were present on the occasion.

Prof Vohra said it was necessary to focus on the health of the mother and the child to develop a healthy society. He said thousands of women and newborn children were dying every year owing to the non-availability of healthcare facilities. He said women and children needed special attention.

The PGMI said that medical professionals were needed to create awareness about issues during a newborn’s upbringing. He stressed that doctors should motivate mothers to breastfeed their newborn children because it would save them from many diseases.

He stressed the training workshop participants to serve their hometowns after getting specialised education so that women in rural and remote areas should not fall ill to diseases because of untrained birth attendants and semi-literate dispensers. Women doctors, he added, could play a major role.

LGH’s Prof Dr Aslam and other professors talked about clinical complications and stressed the need to create awareness so that people seek medical treatment from qualified doctors only. They also stressed the need to provide free tests at Gynaecology Outdoor so that pregnant women may be screened for cancer during pregnancy.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2013.