KARACHI: Dr Saad Khalid Riaz, Sindh Minister of Health, Social Welfare, and Public Health Engineering issued directives for the immediate launch of targeted healthcare interventions for children and mothers in high-risk union councils, including Machar Colony.
He was presiding over a meeting with the Maternal and Child Health Team from the Institute for Research and Development (IRD), led by Dr Subhash Chandir, Director of the Maternal and Child Health Programme at IRD.
The meeting discussed IRD's pioneering efforts to enhance healthcare outcomes for women and children in Sindh.
During the meeting, the health minister commended IRD for its support of the Sindh Electronic Immunization Registry (SEIR), also known as Zindagi Mehfooz EIR, the largest in a developing country with a mission to improve immunisation outcomes in the province.
To date, SEIR has successfully enrolled over 9.4 million children and 3.5 million women, while recording more than 115 million immunisation records.
The minister pledged his support for incorporating SEIR's operational costs into the provincial regular budget.
He strongly recommended the expansion of the Pregnant Women and Birth Registry feature of SEIR to cover private, public, and community-level birthing facilities across Sindh. This expansion aims to ensure that healthcare services reach every woman and child in need.
In a related development, IRD offered its assistance in providing a digital platform for the implementation of the Well Women Clinic model across all healthcare facilities in the province. This collaborative effort signifies a crucial step towards enhancing women and child healthcare services in Sindh.
