KARACHI, May 8: Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad on Wednesday signed three ordinances relating to thalassaemia, health commission and mental healthcare on the occasion of International Thalassaemia Day.

The three ordinances are: The Sindh Healthcare Commission Ordinance 2013, The Sindh Mental Health Ordinance 2013 and The Thalassaemia Ordinance 2013.

Speaking at a function held at the Governor House, Dr Ibad expressed the hope that these laws would help control thalassaemia and streamline healthcare in the province.

He said after promulgation of the thalassaemia ordinance a column would be added to the marriage certificate whose filling would be obligatory to ensure implementation on the law concerned accordingly.

Dr Ibad said the government had set up thalassaemia centres in the city and a num-ber of them had already started functioning.

The health commission law is to improve the quality of healthcare services and ban quackery in the province in all its forms and manifestations.

The mental health law has been devised to consolidate the law relating to the people with mental disorder with respect to their care and treatment, the management of their property and other related matters.The thalassaemia Ordinance 2013 is aimed at providing ways and means for prevention and control of thalassaemia.

According to the ordinance, the healthcare facility treating the thalassaemia patients shall ensure that blood relatives of them are all screened for thalassaemia.

It said the blood relatives of thalassaemia patients who were marrying should be advised and counselled to obtain a pre-marital blood screening to ensure that they were not carrying the trait.Antenatal tests shall be carried out on pregnant women, who are known carriers and whose spouses are also carrier for the trait, subject to approval of the pregnant women and their spouses.

`All individuals who are or shall ever be in the reproductive phase (capable to bearing children) should have their thalassaemia status checked by a simple blood test called haemoglobin electrophoresis. No tests shall be conducted or samples obtained from any individual on reliance of anything contained in this Ordinance, without consent of the person on whom such test is being conducted or from whom the sample is being obtained, said the ordinance.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Medical Association commended the governor and the caretaker health minister for signing into law the three ordinances, which would help a great deal in streamlining a wayward healthcare situation.