Health minister says vaccination teams were not under his control until recently

Lawmakers grill health dept for its failure to control the epidemic.

KARACHI: Lawmakers from the opposition as well as the treasury benches in the Sindh Assembly for once let go of their political differences as they united in their criticism of the provincial health department, which has failed to control the measles outbreak.

The health minister’s response to the criticism was, however, equally unusual. Dr Sagheer Ahmed said that when the measles outbreak was first reported, the health department had nothing to do with the vaccination process in the province. He added that political appointees to the vaccination programme, Peoples Primary Health Initiates (PPHI), were also not coordinating with the health department during the initial stages.

During the Sindh Assembly session on Tuesday, Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s (PML-F) Nusrat Seher Abbasi moved an adjournment motion on the outbreak. However, Ahmed’s explanation seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as lawmakers belonging to the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, Sassui Palijo, Humera Alwani and Bachal Shah, roundly criticised the health department for failing to control the outbreak.

MPA Abbasi pointed out that the “health department claimed that everything is fine, but the adviser to the chief minister on relief [Haleem Adil Sheikh] exposed what is happening behind the scenes and how the health department is not performing its duty.” Culture minister Sassui Palijo added that if the health department had taken proper measures to control the outbreak, then many lives could have been saved.

Dr Ahmed explained that the health department had only recently taken control over the PPHI. “We have removed some negligent officials, and vaccination drives are now going on all over the province,” he said. Ahmed added that malnutrition was a major factor for the spread of the measles outbreak. “Around eight districts of upper Sindh have been affected by the disease, where 219 cases have been reported,” he said, while disputing statistics presented by other lawmakers.

“Every child’s death cannot be attributed to measles,” the health minister claimed. He admitted, nevertheless, that additional measures were needed to get the situation under control.

Female literacy in focus

Female literacy also came up for discussion during Tuesday’s Sindh Assembly session. MPA Anwar Mahar requested the Sindh government take measures to ensure that the female literacy rate in the province is brought up to at least 80 per cent by 2015. However, Jam Tamachi Unar, chairperson of the provincial public accounts committee, said that the target was impossible to meet, as the “teaching staff in Sindh has become a mafia, and teachers are reluctant to teach.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2013.