Dhaka: Health Minister Mohammed Nasim on Wednesday said Awami League in its next election manifesto will include a commitment to bring down the country’s child mortality rate to zero level.

‘Now our main goal is to reduce child and maternal mortality rates. We want to ensure safe maternity and safe birth of newborns,’ he said, reports the UNB.

Speaking at a roundtable discussion, he further said, there will be a big promise in the next general election to bring down the child mortality rate to zero level. I want to make this political commitment as the Health Minister, and we’ll include it in our election manifesto.’

Online news portal bdnews24.com in collaboration with Unicef arranged the discussion titled ‘Lets Save Every Newborn: Election pledge needed’, at the Jatiya Press Club. bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi moderated the programme.

Nasim focused on checking child and early marriages to reduce child mortality and ensure safe pregnancy and newborn births.

‘We still couldn’t take desired steps to stop child marriage, but we’re working on it and people are also getting aware of it. ‘The more we’ll be able to stop child marriage, the more we’ll be able ensure safe maternity,’ he observed.

The minister said their government is making strong efforts to address the problem and discourage people about early marriage through various campaigns.

Nasim said they have recently appointed 600 midwives to provide their services at different hospitals and health centres and thus ensure safe maternity.

He criticised a section of people who prefer cesarean section to normal delivery to get relieved of labour pain.

‘Many people think cesarean is the best opposition for ensuring safe maternity. But there is risk too in it, and one needs to do it during every delivery after choosing it the first time,’ Nasim added.

He said guardians and mothers and sisters must take responsibility to ensure breast-feeding of newborns for the first six months as it is essential for children’s proper growth.

About the wrong declaration of death of a newborn at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), the minister said he has already formed a probe committee to look into the matter asking it to identify those responsible for it by three days.

He said their ministry will take proper action against those responsible for the unexpected incident at the DMCH.