Gaps - Page 7

Federal Health Minister Urges Action As Vaccination Refusals Hindering Polio Eradication

Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal has expressed serious concern over vaccine refusals, stating that nearly 43,000 parents in Sindh — 42,000 of them in Karachi alone —have refused polio vaccination for their children, posing a major obstacle to the eradication efforts. He made these remarks while visiting the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre for Polio (EOC) in Sindh to assess…

CII To Deliberate On Mothers Milk Registry Today

ISLAMABAD: Senior child specialists from the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) Karachi on 25-March-2025 urged the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) to approve the establishment of Pakistan’s first human milk bank, rebranded as the “Mothers Milk Registry,” to save thousands of premature babies who cannot survive without…

Father Tells Heartbreaking Story Of Losing Two Children In Swat Tragedy

MARDAN: A man from Mardan recounted the tragic incident at the Swat…

Birth Registration Of Girls Remains Low

Majority of women and girls have no legal existence in the official…

Pakistan’s Healthcare, Disaster Systems Failing Children, Elderly: Amnesty

KARACHI: Pakistan’s healthcare and disaster response systems are failing to meet the needs of children and older people who are most at risk of death and disease amid extreme weather events related to climate change, Amnesty International said in a new report. Invisible deaths of older people and children during…

Students Face Shortage Of Textbooks

Mianwali. A severe shortage of textbooks in government schools in Hafizabad district is affecting the education of students due to negligence on the part of the Punjab Textbook Board. Several weeks after the beginning of the new academic year, only 20 percent of the students in local schools have received…

11-year-old Boy Partially Paralysed By Polio In KP

ISLAMABAD: Amid an ongoing nationwide polio immunization campaign, health authorities on April 23 confirmed Pakistan’s 7th polio case of the year — an 11-year-old boy from the remote Torghar district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) — reigniting concerns about persistent viral circulation despite intensified efforts to eradicate the crippling disease. According…

Refusals, Missed Children Remain Challenge As Sindh Prepares For Anti-polio Drive

With over 220,000 children missed in the February anti-polio campaign — including nearly 43,000 children who were not allowed to have polio vaccine administered and over 177,000 children who were not available when vaccination teams tried to reach them — Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has called for…

Child Crime and Charity

The greater part of the Juvenile Justice System Act, 2018, which repealed the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, deals with the reintegration of the child offenders in society instead of shunning them as an outcaste. Philanthropy can prove helpful in achieving this goal of juvenile justice as demonstrated in the…

Uncertainty Grips Students As Grace Marks Decision Delayed

Lack of a chairman at BIEK stalls exam planning and grace marks notification KARACHI: The future of thousands of students in Karachi hangs in the balance due to the delay in issuing a notification regarding grace marks for students who failed in the HSC first-year exams. Approximately 100,000 students preparing…

Matric Courses Face Major Delays

Lack of textbooks, trained teachers and proper labs cited as the cause Rawalpindi. In the new academic session 2025-27, the number of academic groups offered for Matric (9th and 10th grade) has been increased from three to six. However, a lack of preparedness for the newly introduced groups has caused…

Hundreds Of Candidates May Miss SSC Exams

Board’s online system crashes, students unable to submit forms HYDERABAD: Annual examinations of Secondary School Certificate (SSC-I and II) are scheduled to begin today (April 7) but hundreds of candidates were unable to submit their examination forms as the board’s online form submission system was down for several days. The…

Every Day, 675 Newborns, 27 Mothers Die In Pakistan

ISLAMABAD/UNITED NATIONS: Around 675 babies under one month of age and 27 mothers die every day in Pakistan from preventable complications—amounting to over 246,000 newborn and nearly 11,000 maternal deaths annually, alarming statistics by United Nations and World Health Organization (WHO) reveal. On the occasion of World Health Day 2025,…

Thalassemia Thrives In Absence Of Premarital Testing

Despite the passage of 12 years, the law to prevent the genetic blood disorder could not be implemented KARACHI: A stitch in time saves nine. The true meaning of this saying would be best understood by the hapless parents of children with thalassemia, who in their expediency to avoid one…