ISLAMABAD - The Mother and Child Week aimed at creating awareness among mothers to help them improving their own as well their children health would be held in 29 districts across Pakistan from March 30. The National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Healthcare, Government of Pakistan, with support from UNICEF, PAIMAN, Pride and Plan international are celebrating Mother Child Week. Ahead of the celebration of the Mother and Child Week a launching ceremony was held here on Wednesday. "To gauge health situation of a country, skilled birth attendants and its immunisations level are considered as two important indicators and unfortunately in Pakistan both sectors are in a quite pathetic position," said Dr Samia Rizwan Health Officer UNICEF while speaking on the occasion. She said earlier the week was named as Child Health and Sanitation Week launched in 2007 on pilot basis in two districts of Punjab but later after getting positive response it was launched in 6 districts. "Now UNICEF and Ministry of Health have joined hands with many partners and the covering have also been expanded from 6 to 29 districts all over Pakistan," she added. She said that the week would be celebrated twice in a year one in April and the second one would take place in October. A number of activities are planned to be undertaken during this week including Advocay programmes, Child immunization and De-Warming, Health education session, Tetanus injections to be administered to pregnant mothers, Training of Healthcare providers, Social mobilization and monitoring activities. A major activity at the federal level is a 'press conference' to be addressed by the minister of health, and attended by all major health sector stakeholders, including the secretary and DG Health. The weeklong activities would focused on key prevention measure helping in reducing pneumonia deaths such as immunization, adequate nutrition given to babies, exclusive breastfeeding, hand washing, lowering indoor pollution and co-trimoxazole prohylaxis for HIV infected children.