Afghanistan Times
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By Akhtar M. Nikzad-KABUL: The French Medical Institute for Children (FMIC) organized the fifth international conference on improvement of mother and child health here on Thursday.
Around 62 medical experts from different countries shared their researches and experiences.
Chief of Medical Department of the FMIC, Abdullah Fahim, told reporters that 140 researches were provided to the organizers by the health experts. Only 62 researches would be shared through presentations and remaining will be shared through posters.
He said the conference is important for improving knowledge of the doctors and stressed “our doctors can learn advanced medical knowledge from the new researches shared by experts in the conference.”
Ambassador of France to Afghanistan, Jean- Michel Marlaud, said that capacity building and monitoring performance on a number of indicators are part of Afghanistan’s Call to Action and would improve maternal and child healthcare services in the country.
“We have just represented the implemented experiences particularly the cases. Recently the FMIC doctors successfully separated the twin sisters. It was unprecedented in Afghanistan’s history,” he said.
He said that next year France and the FMIC’s partners would inaugurate the second phase of healthcare services for mother in the FMIC. “The second phase of FMIC will have 60 beds and we want to increase the number of health workers by the end of 2016,” he mentioned.
Diplomatic Representative of Aga Khan Development Network, Nurjehan Mawani, said that maternal mortality rate is globally high but Afghanistan is one of the countries that have high level of mortality rate.
She said that maternal mortality rate has dropped by 50 percent since 2003, adding that in the same time still Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate but it is much better than previous years.
In the conference the participant also discussed the importance of improving maternal health literacy among mothers through education and the need for increasing investment in health system to facilitate implementation of cost effective solution for mother and child healthcare.
The two-day international conference on maternal and child health was organized in Kabul University. It is said that French and German medical experts did not participate in the conference due to insecurity issue. Majority of the researchers were from Pakistan.
