One day training session of newly recruited Health Education Officers of Punjab Health Department was conducted in the office of Director General Health Services Punjab. Dr ZahidPervaiz Director General Health Services in his presidential address welcomed the participants and congratulated on their selection through Public Service Commission. He said that Govt is very keen in preventive health service delivery and health education is the top most priority.
Health Department has plan to built in-house FM Radio and initiate regular news bulletin to disseminate the necessary health messages. The newly recruited health education officers were trained on theories and practice for health communication. The trainers highlighted the basic rules for internal communication, external communication and IEC resource centres. Communication is the placed in the centre of disease prevention and control. Pakistan is facing very high burden of communicable disease which may be prevented through proper motivation of people. Healthy life style may cut down sufferings of people from non communicable diseases like diabetes, heart attack, hypertension, cancer etc. Positions of health education officers are created in all DHQ hospitals and district health offices. Recently 13 new health education officers have joined the department through public service commission. The officers will be entrusted the responsibilities to conduct patient counselling sessions, arrange and manage awareness seminars and develop continues liaison with the media personal for disease awareness and motivate the public to adopt preventive behaviours.
Professor Dr Ghais ul Nabi Tayab of Lahore General Hospital delivered lecture on prevention and control of hepatitis to develop capacity of the newly recruited officers for launch of an effective hepatitis awareness campaign in the province. Dr Nabi told that hepatitis C is a disease of three decades: in the first 10 years disease sign symptoms do not appear, in the second 10 years sign symptom starts appearing and in the third 10 years time span patient faces serious complications if not treated. Hepatitis C does not spread with food or polluted water. Hep B &C are blood born infections for which people need to opt for minimum use of injections, ensure safe injection practices, never share sharps and piercing tools, and ensure screened blood transfusion. The trainees were given the task to develop their action plan to launch comprehensive health education campaigns in their respective jurisdictions on the priority health subjects including dengue, hepatitis, MERS CoV, Congo fever, child health, breast feeding and international health days.