‘Malnutrition, adulteration major issues’

LAHORE: Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) has highlighted three important issues of malnutrition, food adulteration and affairs concerning Pakistan Medical and Dental Council that direly affect healthcare in country.

While speaking at a press conference here on Friday, PMA office bearers said the foremost socio-economic problems faced by Pakistan was malnutrition. Major nutritional problem are low birth weight due to poor maternal nutrition, protein energy malnutrition, anaemia and iodine deficiency. National dietary guidelines for better nutrition have also been prepared to provide nutrition-related information for healthy living to the masses. The food fortification strategy has also been revised to take sustained action for overcoming micronutrient deficiency.

PMA Centre President Dr Muhammad Ashraf Nizami, Secretary General Dr S M Qaisar Sajjad, Treasurer Dr Qazi Muhammad Wasiq, PMA Karachi President Dr Khalil Mukaddam and General Secretary Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro were present on the occasion.

They said reasons of malnutrition in Pakistan included; insufficient or imbalanced nourishment, poor sanitary conditions and hygiene practices; population growth; high poverty rate; political and economic instability; burden of refugees and internally displaced people; and lack of political will and leadership, while implementation and sustainability of health programs are under question mark.

They recommended that the government needed to create a sense of ownership; do capacity-building and skill development of the people at all level; development and use of nutritional surveillance system; cross-sectoral linkages (multisectoral approach); entire health care system will be made resilient to disasters (climate change, natural disasters, disease outbreak).

“Food adulteration is a serious threat to the health of people of Pakistan. Basic edible products like water, milk, meat, juices, biscuits, flour, chili powder and many others are not fresh and pure but adulterated,” they said.

They showed concern on the recent incident that took place in Karachi, in which 2 children died due to food poisoning after consuming substandard food. They offer condolences to the grieved family. We should learn lesson from such incidents and make our food authorities more functional to check adulteration and maintain the quality standards.

They said PMA has always stressed upon the need to resolve the issues of PMDC on priority basis. The negligence of the governments and the vested interest groups in PMDC has destructed the Medical Education in the country. We were expecting good change after the dissolution of PMDC but the present state of the affairs of PMDC is creating a lot of unrest and disillusion in the medical fraternity across the country.