KARACHI: Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah on Saturday said the Sindh government would soon establish maternal and neonatal child health (MNCH) hospitals in every district of the province.

`Our government in Sindh has increased the budget for medicines available for free in the public sector hospitals up to 500 times, which shows our commitment to providing better healthcare facilities to the people,` he said while speaking at a three-day National Paediatric Conference that opened atahotelhere.

The moot, organised by the Pakistan Paediatric Association (Sindh), is themed `Equity in child health` in which speakers from six countries have participated.

Mr Shah said illiteracy and population explosion were key issues of Pakistan.

He said merely 23 per cent of women in the country were educated, an issue he had been discussing in every session of parliament. `We have to reduce the mortality ratio among children in our country which is still highly alarming.

Health secretary Fazlullah Pechuho said the Sindh government was keen to focus on child health issues and its progress through various strategies to reduce childhood mortality.

`It is encouraging to see the significant improvement in under-five mortality ratio in comparison with what [it] was in 1990, yet, we need to work hard to save our children, particularly neonates, whose deaths formed half of the total deaths of under-fiveyear-old children.

Prof Jamal Raza, president of the PPA, said in Pakistan many children died of preventable diseases.

`Malnutrition is generally prevalent in our country while the rate of immunisation is poor, he said.

Experts stressed the need to improve immunisation to increase the pace of reduction of mortality of children aged less than five years.

Prof Iqbal Memon, Prof Aijaz Khan, and Prof Huma Cheema were among the paediatricians, who said most of such deaths were due to infectious diseases, and premature and low birthweight babies.

They said most of those deaths were preventable and potentially treatable.

`Many child-related health problems are still hovering over the system and plaguing the health of our children,` said an expert.

They said improvement of the healthcare system depended upon the support of institutions to design and implement reforms and improve the existing poorhealthindicators.

Besides, they added, continuity to keep those reforms stable, involvement of private health sector, NGOs and professional organisations to act as catalysts to help achieve the required goals was essential.

The experts said reforms in health policies would further benefit the ongoing activities towards achievement of SGDs targets.

Dr Aijaz Gajani, Dr A.G. Billoo and Dr Mushtaq Memon also spoke.

Earlier, plenary sessions on the topic of `Paediatric TB and HIV` and `Metabolic emergencies` were held.