KARACHI: Experts at an international medical conference on Thursday said each year around 7,000 children in Pakistan were born with club foot while the total number of such cases worldwide was at least 250,000.

`Around 80 per cent of the 250,000 children belong to developing countries,` said Dr Jose Morcuende, chief medical director of the Ponseti International at the Paeds Orthopaedicon held at the JinnahPostgraduate Medical Centre.

He said an integrated system was in place in Pakistan to treat such children successfully.

`This is a treatable disorder,` said Dr Morcuende. He said Ponseti International was working to eradicate club foot from Pakistan.

The experts said permanent disabilities were feared if those children remained untreated. They said the treatment was cheap and without surgery.

Dr Anisuddin Bhatti, focal person for the Ponseti International Pakistan,said every year around 7,000 newborns in the country had club foot and only five to 10pc of them were treated early without surgery.

He said there were also hundreds of thousands of children and young adults who were living with the debilitating condition in the world.

He said club foot was not an embryonic malformation.

He said parents, lunar eclipse or medication during pregnancy were not the reasons of such developmental malformations.

The experts spoke of several meth-ods used to treat club foot; however, they added that except Ponseti, all methods failed to achieve (95-100pc) results.

They said Dr Ponseti did an extensive research on club foot and proved that surgery was the wrong approach to treat it.

Dr Bhatti said the Sindh government had ordered all district and teaching hospital to establish Ponseti Integrated research centres.

Dr Shereen M. Narejo, Prof Ali Mohammed Ansari, and Prof M. Amin Chinoy also spoke.