KARACHI - Medical community, mainly the child specialists on Friday felicitated the members of Sindh Assembly for passing the Sindh Protection of Breastfeeding and Child Nutrition Ordinance 2013.
Senior pediatrician of the country, Prof Dr Dure Sameen Akram and Coordinator, Health, Education and Literacy Programme (HELP) talking to APP said she alongwith her colleagues had been running “Saving Lives of Newborn by Early Initiation of Breastfeeding and Exclusive Breastfeeding,” campaign for quite some time.
“We had been constantly trying to convince our policy makers to realise the intensity of infection induced deaths among our new borns and infants due to bottle feeding,” she said.
“Finally sense prevailed and a logical step has been taken towards promotion of early initiation of breastfeeding and halt to bottle feeding causing deaths,” she added. Prof DS Akram said it is not only bottles and nipples that are the culprit causing infection but infant formula can also not be recommended for all children.
In reply to another question about exclusive breast feeding, she said mothers, elderly women members of the family, birth attendants and doctors equally need to realise importance of exclusive breast feeding.
“Mother’s milk, specifically first feed (colostrum) is extremely important for the babies as it enhances their natural immunity against infections and protects them against series of health risks,” said the child specialist.
Under the Breastfeeding and Child Nutrition Ordinance 2013, any manufacturer or distributor found working for companies who deal with designated products could be fined Rs50,000 to Rs500,000 or imprisoned for two years.
This would be after due criminal procedure, if confirmed to have broken or deviated from regulations.
Cases or complaints lodged against medical practitioners will be referred to Pakistan Medical and Dental Council for further action.
Prof DS Akram sharing details of Saving Lives of New Born by Early Initiation of Breastfeeding and Exclusive Breastfeeding Project, said it was mainly focused to get adopted a Law that would discourage formula milk in the province.
The project was funded by the Maternal and Newborn Health Programme Research and Advocacy Fund (RAF) and implemented by in collaboration with SAIFRN (South Asian Infant Feeding Research Network) and Nutrition Cell Balochistan.
Meanwhile, Aga Khan University Department of Emergency Medicine here on Friday invited abstracts for its Annual Emergency Medicine Conference planned to be held on March 16.
The conference with the theme “Emergency Care for Children,” will be focussed on Resuscitation of critically ill child; Poisoning in children; Injury Prevention and Public health; Quality with Child Friendly Emergency care: Quality with safety; Trauma in children and Community based Emergency Care.
Organisers in their call for Abstracts said there will be no limit on number of submissions by authors, however, all submitted abstracts should be unpublished original work.
Interested researchers have been advised to mention all the authors and specify the presenting authors with affiliations.
The word limit for these abstracts must be 300 words and authors are required to submit abstract based on the theme and sub-themes mentioned above. These could be emailed at: emergency.medicine@aku.edu
It was informed that the abstracts selected will be published in a special supplement of Journal of Pakistan Medical Association.