Chief Minister Raghubar Das on Thursday stressed upon cleanliness and effective delivery of health services in Jharkhand to wash away the taint of severely malnourished State. Speaking on the occasion of launching National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), website to monitor effectiveness of malnutrition treatment programme and a vaccine, the CM iterated State Government's target of achieving impressive performance on a number of health indicators.
“Making Jharkhand healthy and clean in next five years is the target of the State Government. We will do whatever is required and will work hard to achieve the goal. Medical colleges will be made wherever they are required; nurses training centre will be established if need arises. Keeping people healthy is the responsibility of the State Government,” said CM.
While launching NUHM programme, Health Minister Ramchandra Chandravanshi underscored the pressure on urban health services with rising population and dearth of proper sanitation facilities that affects health negatively. Around 14 districts will be covered under NUHM and 51 urban health centres will be setup besides, around 100 community health centres to provide health services to urban poor.
The ambitious programme for urban poor will be implemented with the help of Urban Development Department, Human Resource Development and other Government departments that directly or indirectly affect human health. “Community participation has been given special emphasis in NUHM and to strengthen it, the selected districts will setup 796 women health committees and Sahiya will take people to health centres,” said Chandravanshi.
The CM also emphasised on lifting Jharkhand from bottom on the ladder of States with acute malnutrition to the top and asked for close cooperation among all the stake holders-department of Health, department of Welfare and non-Governmental organisations-and help the State in washing away the taint of State with huge number of malnourished children.
“Addressing malnutrition is our primary objective. We must think how we can wash the taint away,” maintained Das. A web-based system to monitor effectiveness of malnutrition programme has been put in place that will strengthen the hands of the Health department officials. Around 88 Malnutrition Treatment Centres in the State, 3-4 in every district with bed capacity to treat about 25,000 SAM children every year, currently undertake treatment of malnourished children.
The web-based and SMS based system will track each SAM child, monitor weight gained by malnourished children and assess bed occupancy in MTCs. The system will send messages to Sahiyas and Aanganwadi workers so that they can counsel caregivers of the malnourished children and bring them to the MTC for follow-up.