Govt making all efforts to provide quality health care:AzAd

Union Health and Family Welfae Minister Gulam Nabi Azad today said the United Progressive Alliance(UPA) government was making all efforts to provide quality health care on priority basis and was accessible and affordable for the people.

Inauguraitng the four-day Asia Pacific Midwives Confernece here today, the minsiter said India was a country of over a billion people living with vast differential health indicators. States Like Kerala had indicators as good as the most Developed nations while in states like Orissa and Madhya Pradesh it was low.

He said the flagship programme of the National Rural Health Mission(NRHM) launched in April 2005 seeks to improve the quality of health services in rural india. In the last four years, the Mission had been making a difference in every state and union territory of ths country. Stating that the mission had added over 7 lakh Community Health Workers, 70,000 Nurses and Auxiliary Nurse Midwives and over 15,000 MBBS and Ayush doctors to the health systems during this period, he said it had provided an opportunity for poor peole to seek health care services from government facilities.

He said the goverment's efforts had resulted in reduction of maternal mortality from 301 per one lakh births in 2001-03 period to 254 in 2004-06. This reduction would be much faster with scaling up of the interventons under the NRHM.

He said countries like Sri Lanka had shown how developing the midwifery skills alone could bring about a great reduction in Maternal Mortality. "We have learned from the experiences of these countries and are making earnest efforts to expand the work force of nurses and midwives for reduction in Inida's maternal mortality ratio," he said.

-- (UNI) -- 19MS60.xml

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