It appears that the Medical Health and Family Welfare Department of Uttarakhand has virtually conceded that it is not in a position to provide medical facilities in remote areas due to acute shortage of doctors as it has started training midwives (Dai) for what it claims ensuring safe deliveries in remote areas.
Interestingly, while the thrust of the entire health system nowadays is on institutional deliveries which lays emphasis on pregnant women to be brought to nearest hospital facility for safe child births, the Uttarakhand Government is taking a retrogressive step of training the midwives.
The Medical Health department is claiming to train 778 midwives in seven districts of Haridwar, Tehri, Uttarkashi, Pauri, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Almora. The Max India foundation and All India Institute of the Medical Sciences (AIMS) Rishikesh have been roped in by the state government to train midwives and for it a special capsule course is prepared by the experts.
Medical experts expressed concern at the programme to train the midwives and termed it a step in backward direction. They argue that the emphasis of the state government should be on ensuring 100 per cent institutional deliveries so that the infant and mother mortalities are reduced. The former chairperson of State Women Commission, Sushila Balooni, said that State Government was making fool of the people of the State. “How traditional midwives can be trained in one-day programmeIJ” she questioned.
State Health Minister Surendra Singh Negi, however. defended the scheme to train the midwives and said it was done to enhance the skills of traditional workers and the State Government was committed to recruit more doctors into State Health services to ensure that health facilities in remote areas of state are available.