BSS, Rajshahi :
Speakers at a discussion here Wednesday stressed the need for making the forthcoming deworming week scheduled to be observed from October 19 to 25 a total success for building a worm-free society.
They underlined the need on creating widespread health awareness among the school-going children for controlling to prevent many communicable diseases.
Terming the schoolboys and girls as the most vulnerable to worm infection, they called for making them aware about health hygiene and using sanitary latrine together with proper hand washing before taking every meal.
They were addressing the central level meeting organized by the Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) at its conference hall ahead of the National Worm Control week-2014.
The main objective of the meeting was to disseminate ideas among the stakeholders and other policy-makers so that they could play a vital role in creating awareness about controlling the worm.
Panel Mayor-1 Anwarul Amin Azob addressed the meeting as the chief guest with Ward Councilor Abu Bakker Kinu in the chair.
RCC Chief Executive Officer Ajahar Ali, Deputy Civil Surgeon Dr Mumtajul Karim, Prof Dr Asgar Hossain, Family Planning Officer Rafiqul Islam and RCC Chief Health Officer Dr AFM Anzuman Ara Begum also spoke.
The discussants revealed that a large number of school going boys and girls in the metropolis and if they could be prevented from worm- infection, they would be protected from different intestinal diseases easily.
They pointed out that the teachers have a vital role to play in this regard and said knowledge, attitude and practice could help prevent 80 percent of both the communicable and non-communicable diseases along with malnutrition.
Due attention should be given to creation of mass awareness through using both the print and electronic media and other state-level machinery responsible for the purpose to make this idea accessible to every section of the society.
Dr AFM Anzuman Ara Begum informed that the city corporation has set a target to feed deworming tablet to 67,338 children aged from 5 to 12 in phases.
She said some prolonged non-communicable diseases like diabetic, cardiac ailments; high blood pressure, stroke and respiratory inflammation are responsible for 60 percent of the total death.
