Bhubaneswar: In spite of notable progress made by the Odisha government in bringing down the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) in the state in the last few years, the s

Unique integration of programmes across key departments to improve health, nutrition services.

To date, over 19,000 poor patients have benefited from tertiary-level hospital services

The Centre, Karnataka and the World Bank today signed a $70 million additional credit agreement for the ongoing Karnataka Health System Development and Reform Project to further support improvements in health service delivery, particularly for the underserved areas and vulnerable groups. The project builds on the experience of the original $141.83 million project. Since 2006, the project has contributed to development of the state’s health system, including improving administrative capacity and planning, investing in maternal health services, contracting NGOs to run mobile health clinics, supporting community-level public health interventions and contributing to a state government scheme that purchases hospital services for poor beneficiaries from accredited public and private hospitals.

JAIPUR: The infant mortality rate (IMR) in the state has come down from 55 per 1000 live births to 52 per 1000 live births, says the recently released Sample Registration Survey (SRS), 2011, conducted by the Registrar General of India.

The IMR in the state has reduced by 3 points over the last one year, which is equal to the amount of decrease in the IMR in the country. As per the SRS 2010, the IMR in the state was 55 per 1,000 live births. Also, the IMR in India was 47 as per SRS 2010 but it has come down to 44 according to the survey released in October.

To meet the growing demand for institutional deliveries, the government has enhanced the bed capacity of public health facilities exclusively for mother and child care by a whopping 20,000 beds.

To be implemented under the Reproductive and Child Health scheme, the increase in the bed numbers will benefit 10 States that have bad health indicators but a heavy patient load for institutional deliveries. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has set a target of two to two-and-half years for the additional infrastructure to become functional.

A series of multi-stakeholder dialogues on health care for women and children organised at five district headquarters in Rajasthan over the past month addressed the issues of “weak supply side” and lack of coordination among different government agencies for framing robust district-level health plans.

Demands raised by the village panchayats for quality health care services that could deal with the reproductive, maternal and child health issues as well as the problem of sex selection in the rural communities were highlighted at the dialogues organised in Hanumangarh, Jhunjhunu, Sirohi, Bharatpur and Jhalawar. The sixth dialogue in the series will be held in Dausa this Thursday.

Bhubaneswar: Odisha, which has made remarkable progress in reducing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and infant and neonatal deaths in the last few years, is still way above the national average, obse