Commonwealth Press Union - Stories of Interest

Putting children's health on the news agenda in Pakistan

By Jeremy Laurance

What a welcome I received in Pakistan. I have run eight courses for CPU in the last decade and I have never been greeted more warmly, enjoyed greater hospitality or been treated with such courtesy as I had in Karachi. The negative perception of the country in the West as a hotbed of Muslim terrorism is something that the thoughtful, sensitive participants on this course viewed with weary forbearance.

Pakistan has its problems, however; none greater than in the area of maternal and child health which was the subject of this course.

There is widespread ignorance of sex, low use of contraception and 900,000 abortions a year - a rate 50 per cent higher than in Britain even though abortion is technically illegal. There are 30,000 maternal deaths a year, one of the highest rates in the world, in part driven by early marriage and the increased risks of pregnancy in women under 20.

The need for greater awareness of these issues is critical and concerted efforts will be necessary to impress on editors just how important they are. In all, 19 reporters were nominated for this course but six failed to show up on the first day, withdrawn by their newspapers for other duties.

Those that did show were an engaged, hardworking bunch who showed real commitment to exploring issues of which they had previously been unaware. At least three pieces were published in the press during the week of the course and more have appeared since.

The kind of problems the country faces were sharply delineated on the first day by Dr. Sher Shah Syed, secretary general of the Pakistan Medical Association and a consultant obstetrician.

Dr. Syed is a charismatic speaker and he gave a dramatic account of the dire state of maternal health in the country, including the fact that 42 government maternity homes in Karachi are only open for a few hours each day. Mothers whose babies arrive between 10 am and 12 noon may get good care but outside those hours they have to rely on their own resources. A visit to a Marie Stopes sexual and reproductive health clinic the following day confirmed the low use of contraception - and the worryingly high abortion rate.

Marie Stopes plays a vital role in aiding access to safe abortion but still only scratches the surface of the problem which is putting thousands of women at risk as a result of surgery performed in unsafe conditions.

Visits to a Sightsavers project at the Al- Ibrahim Eye Hospital in Malir district, run with military discipline and humming with activity, and to a drop-in centre for street children run by the Pakistan Association for Voluntary Health and Nutrition, gave us an insight into the vulnerability of young people and the critical importance of early intervention to prevent later damage.

The 13 participants on the course were mostly young, bright and argumentative. Few reporters have the opportunity to get out and see projects of the kind we visited and they appreciated it. In my view there is no better way of anchoring ideas in their minds than presenting them in a real life context.