Sunday, June 21, 2009

Prevention Of Typhoid in Pakistan

As discussed in seminar on Typhoid in Pakistan. ,Typhoid is a major disease burden in Pakistan. It is almost endemic in urban densely populated slum areas of major cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi.(http://Dawn.com /National).The mechanism of safeguarding the water supply of drinking water is deficient. A new safe drinking water policy is bieng announced ( see pg 3 of Dawn newspaper/National) but let us hope this is carried in its true spirit.
The true picture is that the urban workers be they domestic servants, cooks, resturant and eatery workers are never screened for Typhoid and Hepatitis. Inspite of appearing to look modern no safety precautions, screening , vaccinations are carried out. Most are carriers of Typhoid and these bacilli are secreted in stools . As no standard operating procedures are carried for pre food handling there is abundant carraige under finger nails. The excreta contamination of drinking water supply is also massive as most pipes for fresh water supply and waste disposal are running parallel in urban areas with frequent overlapping and mixing of two streams. Also sewerage and waste is bieng disposed without treatment directly into rivers and streams. This is bieng taken directly into drinking water supply. The chlorination and some substandrd cleaning is bieng done. This is never made public and no public interest group or government agency is monitoring this. This has to be made public so that there is pressure from public for improving standards. Only doing conferences and announcements of policies by ministers will not solve the problem. Our whole attitude to safeguarding health of the people has to be more proactive with open access to cleaning procedures with more awareness of these issues. Also the affluent citizens need to take more of these issues up as causes and help the administration and the public health officials in a more problem solving way.
There is a need to take up public health issues as serious priority and increase the budgetary allocation .Also there is a dire need to be more proactive in fighting Hepatatitis and Typhoid.only a thrust on war footing will help fight theses menaces.

3 comments:

Daanish said...

What PMA and like Gastroenterologist organizations are doing in this regard?

This sounds like a criminal ignorance of the stste of public health .

MEER said...

The gastroenterology association and lots of physician based societies are there. PMA also frequently does work on awareness and update seminars for both the public and the doctors. the question here is the general apathy of the government, public health officials and the mindset of relatively advantaged people in particular. The policy making , policy implementation and the real outreach to the grass roots is all in disarray and out of sync.My very sincere solution is at the level of UC nazims and councillors and the water and health agenda for public benefit to be made a party manifesto part. We should not wait for funds but generate funds at community level to implement these health plans. see my posts on this aspect.Thanks for reading my blogs.

Daanish said...

I hear alot about civil societies there,can they reform our out of sync system at least one system at a time.

Health must be the priority.