Cleanliness week will be observed in all public sector teaching hospitals as well as district headquarters and tehsil headquarters hospitals and rural health centres from March 10 to 16.
This was decided in a meeting presided over by Chief Secretary Naveed Akram Cheema.
Health Secretary Babar Hayat Tarar has issued a circular to DCOs, principals of teaching hospitals, divisional directors and health EDOs in this regard.
A spokesman of the Health Department said the cleanliness week would be inaugurated by local elected representatives, DCOs and commissioners.
He said hospital administrations had been asked to display banners carrying public awareness messages at prominent places within hospital premises stressing on the need for maintenance of cleanliness by the patients and their attendants.
He said they had been directed to make all public toilets on hospital premises functional. He said they were told to ensure presence of dustbins at appropriate places.
He said repair of leaking and damaged water pipes would also be carried out.
According to the chief secretary’s instructions, the cleanliness week would be supervised by district authorities.
At the end of the week, a report highlighting major activities carried out with pictorial evidence would be sent to the Health Department.
Notification of Infant Feeding Board hailed
Save the Children has congratulated the Health Department for its notification on the Infant Feeding Board under the Punjab Protection of Breastfeeding and Young Child Nutrition (Amendment) Act 2012.
A Save the Children press release called the setting up of the Infant Feeding Board “a step in the right direction.”
The Punjab Protection of Breastfeeding and Young Child Nutrition (Amendment) Act 2012 prohibits propagation of any material or assertion in any manner by a manufacturer or a distributor that encourages bottle-feeding or discourages breastfeeding.
The law also prohibits assertion in any manner that any designated product is a substitute for mother’s milk or equivalent or superior to mother’s milk by any person or presentation of a gift or any other benefit to a health worker or medical practitioner liable to the same penalties.
The law makes it obligatory on manufacturers of a designated product to publish on its container a notice in bold characters stating “mother’s milk is best for your baby and helps in preventing diarrhoea and other illnesses.”
Pakistan voted in favour of adopting the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes during the World Health Assembly in May 1981, and promulgated the Protection of Breastfeeding and Young Child Nutrition Ordinance 2002 to enforce the code.
The ordinance prohibits promotion of any milk produced as partial or total replacement for mother’s milk or represented as a complement to mother’s milk.
Last year, Sindh had adopted the Sindh Protection of Breastfeeding and Young Child Nutrition Act 2013.
“We believe that the setting up Infant Feeding Board is a commitment for effective implementation of the Protection of Breastfeeding and Young Child Nutrition (Amendment) Act. Implementation of the breastfeeding law would go a long way to promote breastfeeding and discouraging bottle feeding.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 6th, 2014.