PSN Advocates New Treatment for Childhood Killer Diseases

Posted on: Wed 04-11-2015

The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), under its PSNPACFaH project, has called for a review of the national treatment guideline for childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea, to the WHO/UNICEF’s new treatment guideline. The society made this call at a press conference, in Lagos, ahead of its 88th Annual National Conference of the Society tagged “Unity 2015,” scheduled for Abuja from November 9 to 14, 2015.

Explaining the new treatment guideline, the Society’s President, Pharmacist Olumide Akintayo, said the new first line treatment for childhood pneumonia includes Amoxicillin dispersible tablet (Amoxicillin DT), while Zinc-Lo ORS has been adopted as treatment for childhood diarrhoea 2016. Akintayo explained that the PSN-PACFaH project is a three-year programme on child and family health, aimed at reducing death caused by treatable childhood killer diseases which accounts for the death of over 400,000 under-five Nigerian children annually.

“PACFaH has four programme areas, which include: treatment of childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea; family planning; routine immunization; and nutrition. The PSNPACFaH is also seeking to encourage local healthcare providers and private sector actors to increase production, distribution and appropriate promotion of the essential life-saving commodities, increase capacity of indigenous civil society- community & faith-based- organisations to conduct advocacy and track budgetary allocation for the procurement of child health commodities”, he said.

Other objectives of PSNPACFaH, according to Akintayo, include advocate for adequate and wide-spread training to ensure that frontline health workers are knowledgeable about diagnosing correctly and effectively treating childhood pneumonia and diarrhea using Amoxicillin DT and Zinc/ORS respectively; build a high performing team of indigenous civil society organisations that will engage with key policy makers for the achievement of the project objectives; advocate for budgetary allocation and in collaboration with the legislature, create a specific budget line in the ministry of health for the procurement of the essential life-saving commodities.