02 August 2010
Patna, India
It will track their health conditions and provide prenatal and postpartum care
In a bid to minimise maternal and infant mortality in the state, the Bihar government has decided to create a database of each pregnant woman and newborn babies at village level to track their health conditions and provide prenatal and postpartum care to mothers.
The data base would offer unique named–based searches on mother and children.
The data will include date of vaccination and expected date of delivery of pregnant woman. If the family of the expecting mother has any cell phone, they would be informed through SMS. In all 80,797 anganwadi sevikas across the state have been involved to make the campaign a success.
The decision to create software to track the health conditions of expecting women and infants was taken at a meeting of senior officials of the Health Department.
Executive Director of the State Health Society Sanjay Kumar said, "The idea behind the campaign is to check mortality rate of expecting mothers and infants. The campaign, christened as ‘Mother and Child Protection Campaign’ will be launched in villages next month."
Under the progamme, the agencies would also take care of nutritional aspects of women and newborns, Health Department Principal Secretary C K Mishra said.
He said the officials deputed at primary health centres would apprise expecting women of benefits of breast feeding.
"The electronic tracking programme has been started due to shortage of manpower in health sector," he said, adding that other information about the health of women and child would also be provided on demand.
ICDC Director N Vijay Laxmi said that the government was contemplating to enroll 9,000 more anganwadi sevikas. They would be engaged in collecting information about expecting women in remote villages.
She said that Integrated Management of Newborn and Childhood Illness (IMNCI) has been introduced in 24 districts of the state. Special Care Newborn Units have been set up in six districts.
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