Year End Review | Ministry of Health & Family Welfare - Part 2

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Maternal Health

• As per the Registrar General of India (RGI), the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) of India stands at 97 per lakh live births.

Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) is defined as the number of maternal deaths during a given time period per 100, 000 live births.

• Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan (SUMAN) – Provides assured, dignified, respectful and quality healthcare at no cost and zero tolerance for denial of services.
• Coverage – Every woman and new-born visiting the public health facility to end all preventable maternal and new-born deaths.
• Maternal Perinatal Child Death Surveillance Response (MPCDSR) – It is a software to eliminate preventable maternal mortality by obtaining and strategically using information to guide public health actions and monitoring their impact.
• Midwifery initiative – Aims to create a pool of Nurse Practitioners in Midwifery skilled in accordance with competencies prescribed by the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM).
• Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (PMSMA) – To provide fixed-day, free of cost, assured, comprehensive and quality antenatal care, universally to all pregnant women in their 2^nd / 3^rd trimesters of pregnancy.
• It is provided on the 9^th day of every month.
• Extended PMSMA strategy – It was launched to ensure quality ANC to pregnant women, especially to high-risk pregnancy (HRP) women and individual HRP tracking till a safe delivery is achieved.
• It is achieved by means of financial incentivization for the identified high risk pregnant women and accompanying ASHA for extra 3 visits over and above the PMSMA visit.
• LaQshya (Labour Room Quality Improvement Initiative) – It improves the quality of care in labour room and maternity operation theatres to ensure quality care during delivery and immediate post-partum.
• Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) – It aims at reducing maternal and neonatal mortality.
• It promotes institutional delivery among pregnant women especially with weak socio-economic status i.e. women from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and BPL households.
• JSY is a safe motherhood intervention under the National Health Mission (NRHM).

Child Health

• Facility Based Newborn Care (FBNC) program – Special New-born Care Units at District Level and New-born Stabilization Units at the level of FRUs/ CHC levels are established to provide services to sick and small new-borns.
• National New-born Week – Is observed from 15th to 21st November every year to reinforce the importance of new-born health as a key priority area.
• The theme of National New-born Week for year 2024 is "Optimising Antimicrobial Use to Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in Newborns".
• MusQan initiative – Designed to ensure provision of quality child friendly services from birth to children up-to 12 years of age.
• It aims to ensure provision of quality child friendly services in public health facilities to reduce preventable new-born and child morbidity and mortality.
• Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) – Envisages Child Health Screening and Early Intervention Services, a systemic approach of early identification and link to care, support and treatment.
• It aids to improve the overall quality of life of children enabling all children achieve their full potential and also provide comprehensive care to all the children in the community.

Nutrition

• Mothers’ Absolute Affection (MAA) – To improve breastfeeding coverage which includes early initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding for first six months.
  • It is followed by age- appropriate complementary feeding practices through capacity building of frontline health workers and comprehensive IEC campaigns.
• National Deworming Day (NDD) – Under NDD, albendazole tablets are administered to students via schools and anganwadi centres to reduce the soil transmitted helminth (STH) infestation among all children and adolescents (1-19 years).
• Anemia Mukt Bharat (AMB) programme – It aims to reduce the prevalence of anemia among various groups, including:
  • Children (6-59 months), children (5-9 years), adolescents (10-19 years) and
  • Pregnant women, lactating women, and women in reproductive age (15-49 years).
• Adolescent Friendly Health Clinics (AFHCs) – It act as the first level of contact of primary health care services with adolescents.
• The primary aim is provision of counselling and clinical services to the visiting adolescent client.
• Weekly Iron Folic Acid Supplementation (WIFS) – It provides weekly supervised IFA tablets to in-school boys and girls and out-of-school girls for prevention of iron and folic acid deficiency.
• Scheme for Promotion of Menstrual Hygiene among Adolescent Girls – Ensure that adolescent girls have adequate knowledge and information about menstrual hygiene, use of sanitary napkins and environmentally safe disposal mechanism.
• It also aims to ensure that high- quality and safe products are made available to them.
• Menstrual Hygiene Policy for School Going Girls, 2024 – Ensure that school-going girls in government and government-aided schools have access to safe and low-cost menstrual hygiene products.
• Peer Educator program – Ensure that adolescents are benefitted from regular and sustained peer education covering nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, conditions for non- communicable diseases (NCDs) and so on.

Family Planning

• Mission Parivar Vikas – Launched in 2016 for substantially increasing access to family planning services in 146 high fertility Districts:
  • With Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 3.0 and above in 7 high focus States (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Assam).
• In November 2021, the Scheme was extended to remaining districts of the 7 high focus States and all districts of six North Eastern States.
• Antara program – Is a public health initiative that provides a contraceptive injectable (MPA) to women in India.
• Chhaya or Centchroman – Is a non-hormonal pill that needs to be taken twice a week for first 3 months and once a week thereafter.
• It is a safe and effective method and can be given to breastfeeding mothers.

eHealth

• National Telemedicine Service-eSanjeevani – Provides access to specialized medical healthcare by providing facility for doctor-to- doctor consultation and patient-to-doctor consultation.
• This initiative aimed to make healthcare services more accessible, especially in rural and remote areas.
• Tele Mental Health Assistance and Networking Across States (Tele MANAS) – Aims to provide universal access to quality mental health care through 24X7 tele-mental health services.
• District Mental Health Programme (DMHP) – Component of NMHP that has been designed to improve coverage and accessibility of mental healthcare.

Tobacco Control and Drug Addiction Treatment

• Tobacco Free Youth Campaign (TFYC) 2.0 – It is a nationwide, 60-day initiative designed to empower and educate the youth of India on the harmful effects of tobacco use.
• It is part of the Government of India’s ‘Viksit Bharat@2047: 100-day goals.
• Observing World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), 2024 – Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, observed the ‘World No Tobacco Day’ on 31^st of May 2024.
• This year's theme is “Protecting Children from Tobacco Industry Interference,”
• New Specified Health Warnings on Tobacco Product packs – It is a new sets of specified health warnings for all tobacco product packs, introduced by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• Targeted tobacco control interventions in rural communities – MoHFW released the Standard Operating Procedures for Villages to be Tobacco Free.
• Frontline health workers – The Health Worker Guide was revised and released on 24^th September 2024.
• The guide offers a structured approach to systematically train a large number of healthcare providers and strengthen the tobacco cessation services at the community level.
• 8^th Meeting of the WHO Global Tobacco Regulators Forum (GTRF) – India stated about the depiction of tobacco in entertainment media, as well as addressing cross-border advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products.
• Bilateral event with Australia on E-Cigarettes – MoHFW participated in the bilateral event with Australia during the 77^th World Health Assembly, focusing on electronic cigarettes.

References

1. Report | Ministry of Health & Family Welfare
2. Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) | Ministry of Health & Family Welfare