Chandigarh, March 1
It is more important to diagnose diseases among children than providing sophisticated intensive care units. Awareness about the symptoms of diseases among public plays a major role in reducing the pediatric mortality, say experts.

There is a desperate need to teach the parents recognise symptoms of common diseases so that they could rush the affected children to the hospitals in time. Moreover, the simplification of diagnosis for parents and simplification of procedure for the doctors would help in controlling the reducing the pediatric mortality, claimed Dr Devictor Devis from Paris.

Dr Devictor emphasised the need for early recognition of the need for these drugs used to improve BP (called "inotropes") in a septic child besides the importance of understanding of the best-suited drug for particular situation.

He was in the city to attend an international continuing medical education (CME) programme on advanced course in pediatric intensive care to be organized by the department of pediatrics, PGI, here today.

Dr Geoff Barker from Canada, a senior medical consultant of Healthy Kids International, Toronto, said children lived longer where safe water, immunization and nutritious affordable food was available.

Expressing concern over the functioning of government machinery, Dr Barker pointed out that much of the international aid leaks out before it reaches the end-user because of deficiencies in health care providers, neglect of infrastructure and corruption and wastage.

The conference was inaugurated by the Hon'ble Governor of Haryana, Dr A.R. Kidwai. He emphasised the need of pediatric intensive care in India. He also said the development of ICU's was essential indirectly for the success of the family planning program which would be adopted only if child survival was ensured.

Prof Niranjan Kissoon from Vancouver, Canada, spoke on sepsis and shock (low BP).He said there was a need to recognize the signs and symptoms of shock early so that children do not progress to an irreversible state of disease.

Early aggressive treatment with fluids, oxygen and antibiotics could help reduce mortality. Every hour's delay increases mortality two-fold. These measures should be started even before the child reaches the ICU, he added.

Speaking on pediatric intensive care in an "ideal world", Dr Edwin van der Voort from the Netherlands said that ideally pediatric ICU's should remain empty, because in an ideal world, all serious diseases should be preventable. He lamented the fact that even in the developed world there remain serious lacunae in immunization rates and staffing of ICU's.

Chandigarh, March 1
Two PGI employees have brought laurel to their institutions through their presentations at conference of the International Society for Heart Research (Indian Section) held at SP Medical College, Bikaner, recently.

Taranjit Singh Rai from department of experimental medicine and biotechnology has won the N.S.Dhalla award for oral presentation in the conference while Tarunveer Singh Ahluwalia from the department of nephrology won KD Gupta memorial award for the best poster presentation in the same conference.