SUKKUR: Twenty-three out of every 100 children are malnourished in the Shikarpur district of Sukkur. Mishal Pakistan organised the field visit of a team of journalists for evidence-based reporting of the health facilities. The team, comprising journalists from Karachi, Sukkur and Shikarpur, visited Health Unit Mirzapur of District Shikarpur, where they found patients, children and women were victims of malnutrition and the people of Shikarpur were deprived of health facilities. Giving details, representative of the UNICEF Asfandyar said 23 children out of every 100 were victims of malnutrition. He said his team, after an investigative survey found that poverty, illiteracy, lack of advocacy, inadequate maternal health facilities, poor sanitation systems were behind the malnutrition.
He said most of the mothers, due to lack of awareness of breast feeding, were not breast feeding their children properly. He said the UNICEF resumed its programme of helping the malnourished children as well as their mothers by giving food supplements, including milk. Besides this, counselling was offered to mothers about health hygiene, like hand washing and giving them other health tips.
The team later met local journalists at the Gymkhana Club where politician and former provincial minister Maqbool Ahmad Sheikh pointed out that the government was not seriously focusing on health issues. He said there are lack of health facilities in Shikarpur; hospitals are there, but doctors are not, wherever doctors are there but medicines are not there. He said political-based transfers and postings are the main issue in the delivery of health services. He said that there is no budgeting issue, but there is mismanagement which has led to corruption.
Sheikh pointed out that in the District Health Hospital there are no specialist doctors for heart, no medicines and there is no gynaecologist. He said women are dying before giving birth to their children owing to the lack of maternal health facilities.
Sheikh reiterated that health was not a priority of the government. Local journalists pointed out that political interference was badly affecting the delivery of health services. They also said malnutrition, maternal deaths and other such terms were heard of in the floods of 2010. They said the locals are not aware of measles and whooping cough; they believe these are not diseases but are myths.
They said the health issues doubled after the 2010 floods and also the miseries of the people of Shikarpur. They advised Mishal Pakistan to hold sessions with electronic media to sensitise them on health issues and convince them on giving space to local reporters when they report health issues.
Chief Operating Officer, Mishal Pakistan, Asif Farooqi pointed out the important role of journalism in the promotion of evidence- based policy to reduce child and maternal mortality. He pointed out that the government and the media focus only on polio vaccination drives, but do not focus on other health issues like malnutrition.
Iqbal Detho, Provincial Manager Advocacy and Campaign UNICEF, said health issues should be sensitised and advocacy is the need of the time. He said the media can sensitise the issue better than door-to- door advocacy. He quoted the National Nutrition Survey NNS-2011 that about 58 per cent of the surveyed households were food insecure (adults and children both experienced inadequacy of household food supply) at the national level.
Sindh was found in the survey as the poorest and most food deprived province of the country with only 28.2 per cent households having food security, while the remaining were found food insecure. He said the most recent national nutrition survey found global acute malnutrition rate of 17.5 per cent (moderate acute malnutrition-10.9 per cent and severe acute malnutrition-6.6 per cent) in the Sindh province, which was an alarming situation and needed to be managed to save the children, pregnant and lactating women from malnutrition or under nutrition and micro nutrient deficiencies.
