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Telangana govt spends Rs.1,500 crore to reduce MMR and IMR in the state
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A Raju, Hyderabad
May 28 , 2016
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The Telangana state government is spending Rs.1,553
crore through women and child welfare department to mitigate the
maternal and infant mortality rates in the state. At present the state
government has succeeded in reducing the infant mortality rate (IMR) to
28 per every 1,000 births and maternal mortality rate (MMR) to 92 per
every one lakh pregnant women in the state, while the national average
of IMR is 40 deaths per thousand births and MMR is 167 mother deaths for
every one lakh women in the country.
Tummala Nageshwarar Rao,
minister for women and child welfare department said, “This year the
Telaganana government has allocated Rs.1553
crore for healthcare needs of women and children in the state. The main
aim of the government is to reduce the IMR and MMR and we have been
successful in our attempt to reduce it on par with the national average.
Our target is to reach IMR below 10 and MMR below 40 by end of this
year.”
Under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS),
the state government is spending a major chunk of allocated funds for
providing healthcare needs such as vaccination and medicines to children
below 5 years. Apart from this, to ensure proper nourishment of the
children and to reduce the neonatal and malnutrition deaths, the state
government is providing eggs and ‘balamrutam’ nutritional food to about
10.06 lakh children in the state.
For reducing the MMR, the state government has earmarked Rs.508
crore to be spent for providing iron tablets, nutritious food and other
medication for the pregnant women. About 4.38 lakh pregnant women have
been benefiting under the ‘Arogya Laxmi’ healthcare scheme for the
women in the state.
Overall the government is providing
healthcare and nutritional services to small children below 5 years and
pregnant women through 35,700 anganwadi centers in the state.
However, despite all these efforts and continuous spending of about Rs.1,500
crore every year since 3 years, there are still lot of areas that are
needed to fill up the gaps. The major problem that is still concerning
the government is proper implementation of the ICDS scheme in rural
areas. To ensure transparency and avoid rampant corruption, the state
government has embarked on employing a tracking and monitoring system,
wherein the Anganwadi centers need to update the beneficiaries names
every month in the website.
This is going to further improve the
efficiency and very soon the Telangana government is aiming to reach
its intended goals of reducing the IMR and MMR in the state.
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TOPICS
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That foods might provide therapeutic benefits is clearly not a new concept. ...
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