Rainwater leak forces closure of OTs at Children’s Hospital

LAHORE:The emergency operation theatres (OT) at Children's Hospital, Lahore, have been closed due to rainwater leakage, electrical and mechanical issues.

The Punjab interim government had upgraded the emergency ward theatres by spending millions of rupees, but standard of upgradation has been exposed during the current Monsoon. The operations, including neurosurgery, general surgery, etc are performed in these theatres. The parents of child patients were disappointed after the hospital administration put a notice of closure of emergency ward OTs. However, as a makeshift arrangement, the hospital administration has been shifting emergency patients to the elective surgery OTs on the second floor. The routine operations are now being delayed due to the use of elective surgery theatres for emergency patients. The Medical Director of the Children's Hospital, however, said that the emergency operations are being performed without any delay.

‘Children’s nutrition to be improved’

Provincial Health Minister Khawaja Imran Nazir has said that despite the fact that Punjab produces the most food, our children are underweight due to lack of food. ‘To remove the main causes of undernutrition, the Punjab Nutrition Board and IRMNCH will soon devise a mechanism, he said this while talking to a delegation of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which called on him at the Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Monday.

The health minister said that nutrition screening of 3 million children was being done annually at more than 2,000 centres of the health department through 42,000 lady health workers in the province. The BMGF delegation was given a detailed briefing on public health issues, including nutrition of children, mothers, family planning, polio vaccination.