LAHORE – The Lahore Electricity Supply Company (LESCO) on Thursday arranged a workshop to promote awareness amongst its employees on environmental and social issues and communicable diseases.
LESCO Board of Directors (BoD) Chairman Rafay Alam chaired the workshop. Dr Khaqan Babar, in his presentation, said that there are scores of infectious and communicable diseases and deaths from infectious diseases number up to 18 million per annum. He said that these diseases have social and economic impacts and vulnerability in infants, children and old people is higher due to relatively compromised immunity systems.
Talking about social impacts, Babar said that losing jobs, unemployment, discrimination, family disruptions and broken families have a negative impact on social life of citizens. Talking about economic impacts, he highlighted decrease in per capita income, increased burden of provision of healthcare and social security, substantial loss in productivity and GDP, increasing incidence of poverty and reduction in state revenue eg from tourism as important impacts.
He said that these diseases could be prevented by frequently washing hands with soap, wiping and drying the body after a bath, taking care of personal hygiene, drinking boiled or purified water, avoiding eating long stored cooked food, cooking food properly, washing vegetables and meat thoroughly before cooking, preferring home cooked food, not eating unwashed raw vegetables and fruits and checking bedding and clothing.
