Child survival: ‘Pakistan’s infant mortality rate highest in the world’

The matter requires an integrated health service, experts say.

LAHORE: More than 200,000 children in Pakistan die on the first day of their lives, the highest in the world, speakers at the Neonatology Conference on Sunday said.

The conference was organised by the Pakistan Paediatric Association’s neonatology group. Adviser to the Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique, Save the Children and the UNICEF congratulated the Pakistan Paediatric Association(PPA) for holding the first neonatology conference in the country.

For the past two days, speakers at the international conference- neonatologists, paediatricians, general practitioners and public health specialists from prestigious international medical institutions- discussed the overall situation, causes of newborn mortality and recommended clinical and policy measures.

The speakers said that Pakistan had managed to decrease the mortality rate for children under the age of five, but the mortality rate for newborn children had remained the same for many years.

The speakers said that the government should extend support in the matter and scale up interventions to accelerate progress in improving newborns’ chances of survival.

Experts underlined eight important interventions to prevent these deaths. These were emergency obstetric care in the case of birth complications, management of pre-term birth through Kangaroo Mother Care, neonatal resuscitation and early initiation of exclusive breastfeeding. Many experts were of the view that newborn mortality did not require special projects or vertical initiatives but an integrated health service that could deliver across the continuum of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child care. The conference delegates also lauded the role of health workers for labour, delivery and immediate-after care for the newborn and mother.

Experts speaking on the occasion included Prof Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Prof Sajid Maqbool, Dr Muhammad Moin, Dr Sajjad Rahman, Prof Mubariz Naqvi, Dr Anjum Hashmi, Prof Khalid N Haque and Dr Stephen Wall of Save the Children.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2014.