NEW DELHI, Aug 21: Health Secretary CK Mishra has emphasised upon the need for innovative approaches to make facilities at the peripheries work to avoid crowding of tertiary care facilities which impacts the quality of healthcare.
Addressing the national review meeting attended by state Health Secretaries and NHM Mission Directors from all states/UTs here recently, he asked the states/UTs to take a critical look at problem areas and resolve them through innovative approaches and new ideas.
Among the areas highlighted were the need of states to focus on labour room protocols for intrapartum care, carry out 100 per cent Maternal Death Audit for understanding cause of maternal death and monitoring of inborn and out born deaths of sick newborns separately.
Mr Mishra stressed that Mission Indradhanush was not a programme but a campaign towards increasing immunisation coverage. The states were urged to strengthen routine immunisation.
There was gap in initiation of early breast feeding which needed to be actively bridged through interventions/programmes such Mothers’ Absolute Affection-MAA. Complementary feeding and its quality are also issues that states need to address, he said.
States/UTs actively participated by highlighting problem areas, challenges and providing suggestions thereby serving not only as a forum for inputs for the Health Ministry but also for cross learning across States/UTs.
Issues on the agenda included reduction of MMR, IMR, improving immunisation and uptake of family planning measures in selected states/UTs, rollout of recent initiatives such as, strengthening sub Centres as Health and Wellness Centres, screening for NCDs, progress in TB elimination, status of preparedness for swine flu, addressing HR challenges, DBT payments, digital payments and rare diseases.
Asserting that NHM provided unparalleled flexibilities to address healthcare challenges specific to state context and needs, Mr Mishra said while there has been considerable improvement as reflected in accelerated decline of MMR, U5MR, TFR and reversing the incidence of diseases such as TB, HIV, AIDS and malaria, areas such as Non Commnicable Disease (NC) prevention and control required better response.
On the substantial economic loss for families and nation as a whole, he highlighted that disease burden on account of NCDs was increasing resulting in and emphasised on strengthening health systems, particularly making SNCUs, FRUs and NBCCs functional with requisite HR and equipment backed by trained team for provisioning of quality services.
The Health Secretary urged the states to utilise the NHM flexibilities to devise new strategies and sharpen existing strategies for last mile approach. He exhorted them to start measuring service delivery and monitoring performance based on a set of deliverables with clear allocation of responsibilities and roles for incentivising and fixing accountability. He urged States to co-opt the private sector as elimination of TB is not possible otherwise. (UNI)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel